Cebu Pacific said it plans to launch service from Manila to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xiamen and Macau in September and October with fares that are 85% lower than those currently available on the routes. Daily flights to Shanghai and Xiamen will begin Sept. 12 and 26 respectively. Four-times-weekly Guangzhou service will launch Oct. 10 and thrice-weekly Macau service the following day. British Airways will transfer flights from Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston Intercontinental from London Gatwick to Heathrow effective March 30.
Lufthansa Cargo will transfer all flights from Cologne to East Asia and the US to Leipzig beginning Oct 27. LHC said the move is related to the opening of the new DHL Express Europe hub at LEJ next year. Since March 2004, the two companies have partnered on a joint network connecting Europe, the US and Asia. LHC will operate its own flights from LEJ to Atlanta, Seoul Incheon and Istanbul Ataturk.
DHL yesterday launched next-day express delivery from New York JFK to nine European destinations, available Monday to Thursday. The service includes pickup by DHL couriers of parcels from businesses in New York and transfer of the shipments by helicopter to JFK to bypass ground traffic. Service is available to Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Frankfurt, Geneva, London, Madrid, Paris and Zurich.
Aeroports de Paris today will inaugurate its new Satellite S3 at Paris Charles de Gaulle. S3 is an add-on to Terminals 2E and 2F and will have a yearly passenger capacity of 8.5 million. The satellite is designed to accommodate six A380s simultaneously.
AirTran Airways will relocate its entire operation at Orlando International to Landside B and Airside 4 effective June 27, doubling its customer handling capacity at the ticket counter. It will have 23 self-serve kiosks and four staffed positions at check-in rather than the 10 kiosks and six staff at the old Landside A and Airside 2 location. It will have eight gates in Terminal B and this summer plans to launch service from MCO to Memphis, Kansas City, San Diego, St. Louis and Portland, Maine.
Lufthansa will launch five-times-weekly Frankfurt-Buenos Aires service Oct. 28 aboard a three-class, 330-seat 747-400. Skyservice Airlines launched weekly Zagreb-Toronto service. Norwegian will commence a thrice-weekly Oslo Gardermoen-Moscow Domodedovo service on Aug. 16. Route will go five-times-weekly from Sept. 3.
Canada's Porter Airlines, whose launch from Toronto City Centre Airport last October caused some consternation at Air Canada Jazz, this week won official clearance from the US Dept. of Transportation to expand its regional service south of the border.
Germanwings will open its fifth base on June 22 in Dortmund with a single A319 that will serve Vienna, Istanbul Ataturk, Palma, Ibiza and Faro. A second A319 will be transferred to the airport for the coming winter schedule. CEO Thomas Winkelmann told ATWOnline that the carrier is growing "organically" and is on its way to becoming an important player in Europe's crowded LCC market. A sixth German base is expected to come on line next year. Germanwings currently operates 27 A319s/A320s.
Hainan Airlines will launch Beijing-St. Petersburg service on July 8 aboard a 767-300. Wizz Air will launch twice-weekly Sofia-Dortmund service from Oct. 29. It will be the LCC's third route from the Bulgarian capital. Midwest Airlines is expanding its existing codeshare with Mesa Air Group subsidiary Air Midwest. Midwest Airlines passengers in Kansas City now will be able to connect to Columbia/Jefferson City, Joplin and Kirksville, Mo., and Grand Island, McCook and Omaha, Neb.
SkyEurope Airlines confirmed yesterday that it will turn Vienna into its principal base beginning Oct. 28. The LCC launched service from the airport in March and said it was prepared to challenge Austrian Airlines ( ATWOnline, May 2). SkyEurope will increase its VIE fleet from two 737-700s to four and add flights to 12 destinations while boosting frequencies on existing routes like Amsterdam and Sofia.
Sibiu Airport in Romania will install Siemens Industrial Solutions & Services' new modular, pre-installed Sibag Smart baggage handling system. The system is scheduled to come online in October.
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said this week that the carrier plans to offer service on a codeshare basis to destinations in Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean from Baltimore by 2009 or 2010, according to press reports. Flights will be operated by partner ATA Airlines. "This airport is well prepared for more growth," he told businesses serving BWI, according to The Baltimore Sun. "Philadelphia is strained. . .I don't really see it as a cannibalization issue here at all." SWA also is interested in codesharing on flights to Europe.
Etihad Airways will launch thrice-weekly Abu Dhabi-Singapore flights on Sept. 27 aboard an A330-200, with service becoming daily by year end. Air Canada Jazz started daily Vancouver-Sacramento flights aboard 50-seat CRJs. EasyJet launched daily London Gatwick-Palermo service aboard a new A319, which is the 20th aircraft based at LGW and the 135th in the LCC's fleet.
Continental Airlines and future SkyTeam partner China Southern Airlines yesterday unveiled a "strategic partnership" under which the carriers will offer loyalty program and lounge reciprocity and "extensive codesharing." Frequent-flier programs will be linked in September, with lounge access to become available when CZ joins SkyTeam later this year. From November, CO will place its code on CZ flights connecting to the US carrier's daily Newark-Beijing service as well as CZ's Guangzhou-Los Angeles service. China Southern will place its code on CO flights from LAX.
Finnair increased Helsinki-St. Petersburg frequencies to 20-times-weekly thanks to the award of three additional flights covered by a codeshare agreement with Rossiya. It also flies daily to Moscow Sheremetyevo in cooperation with Aeroflot. Finnair CEO Jukka Hienonen recently told ATWOnline that there are 13 Russian cities with more than 1 million people that Finnair would like to serve if it can secure permission. "Of course we can't fly to all of them, and it still isn't easy for us to get more traffic rights into Russia," he said.
Northwest Airlines will launch 19-times-weekly Dallas/Fort Worth-New York LaGuardia service Sept. 5 aboard 124-seat A319s. Flights will operate thrice-daily on weekdays and twice-daily on Saturdays and Sundays. Viva Macau said it received approval to launch services to Tokyo, Osaka, Pusan, Manila Clark, Phuket and Ho Chi Minh City. Start dates and frequencies were not announced. The airline will begin serving Sydney on Aug. 15. It operates 767s.
Brussels Charleroi was shut down Friday following a strike by security staff employed by the Walloon Ministry of Transport. Ryanair, by far the largest carrier at the airport, said the "illegal" strike was the second in the past year and forced it to cancel all flights to and from CRL through the weekend. The LCC said it has "asked for an explanation as to why no contingency plan has been put in place" and that it was "unacceptable that the travel plans of 15,000 passengers over a busy weekend can be disrupted by the unlawful actions of a small number of airport security staff."
Thai Airways said its board decided to cancel its contract to manage Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong "due to delay of handover [of] the airport to Thai according to the contract." The carrier was supposed to take control more than a year ago, the Associated Press reported from Bangkok. Thai also said it would hire 426 new flight attendants.
Ryanair will expand operations at its Stockholm Skavsta base in October, adding a fifth and sixth 737-800 and launching 12 new routes during the month: Seven-times-weekly to Berlin Schoenefeld and Bratislava; four-times-weekly to Eindhoven, Baden Baden, Liverpool and Valencia; thrice-weekly to Alicante, Basel, Pisa and Porto, and twice-weekly to Trapani and Malta. A twice-weekly service to Salzburg will start in December. Ryanair said it expects to carry 2.5 million passengers to and from NYO each year.
Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, parent of Atlas Air and Polar Air Cargo, yesterday said it has entered into a joint venture agreement to build a new cargo warehouse at Seoul Incheon. The 12,000-sq.-m. Atlas Air Cargo Terminal, slated to open early next year, will be operated by AACT Co., a JV comprising Atlas Air and Sharp, a South Korean provider of maintenance, ground and related airline support services. It will be the first facility at Incheon to be at least partly owned by a foreign airline.
Royal Jordanian Cargo will shift its five-times-weekly A310F service to Brussels from Maastricht-Aachen. Saudi Arabian Airlines will add two frequencies to its Brussels cargo schedule on June 20, bringing to 20 the number of weekly flights it operates at the airport with MD-11Fs and 747-200Fs. Saudi Arabian is the largest freighter operator at BRU.
London Heathrow's new £50 million ($98.6 million) air traffic control tower was opened officially yesterday by UK Secretary of State-Transport Douglas Alexander. Controllers have been operating at the 87-m.-high tower for the past seven weeks. It has a 360-deg. view of the entire airfield and handles up to 90 arrivals and departures per hr. on two runways.
Three years after Air France and KLM completed their merger, all the slots that the two airlines agreed to surrender in order to obtain clearance from the European Commission remain available, ATWOnline has learned. The carriers yielded slots on five intercontinental and nine short-haul city-pairs from Paris and Amsterdam so as to allow competitors to operate 31 new daily return flights on those routes. To facilitate distribution, a new entrant was to receive a short-haul slot within 30 min. of its requested time and a long-haul slot within 90 min.
Citing "huge demand," Silverjet CEO Lawrence Hunt told ATWOnline that the all-business-class carrier is preparing to announce new US destinations just six months after launching service between London Luton and Newark. "We had a 61% load factor in our second month," he said. He specifically mentioned Chicago and Los Angeles as potential new markets. Silverjet features lie-flat beds, in-seat entertainment systems and reduced check-in times from a private terminal at Luton. Some 70% of tickets are purchased online, while travel agents book the remainder, Hunt said.
