Southwest Airlines plans to launch daily Albany-Tampa service from Oct. 29 and daily Reno/Lake Tahoe-Chicago Midway flights from Dec. 4. It also announced frequency increases on 10 additional routes. Qantas and Jet Airways concluded a codeshare arrangement that will expand Qantas's network within India from Sept. 6. It will codeshare on Jet flights from Singapore to Delhi and Mumbai, offering connections to all Australian capitals. The codeshare will complement Qantas's thrice-weekly A330 Singapore-Mumbai service.
AirAsturias of Spain expects to launch service in October, according to Spanish press reports. The startup will be based at Oviedo Airport and initially will fly four-times-weekly to Rome, Milan, Lisbon and either Frankfurt or Berlin aboard A320s. It also intends to serve Paris, London, Brussels and destinations in Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, where its main shareholder, the Celuisma hotel group, has interests. Long-haul flights will originate from Madrid Barajas.
United Airlines will close its Washington Dulles reservations facility by mid-October, resulting in the loss of 504 jobs, according to a letter sent last week by the airline to the Virginia Employment Commission cited by the Washington Business Journal. UA issued a release last week saying its fall schedule at IAD included a 13% increase in departures over the year-ago period. Separately, UA's Sean Donohue is on the move again. Parent UAL Corp. announced yesterday that he will take on a newly created role as senior VP-Flight Operations and Onboard Service divisions.
Air Berlin is evaluating using Munich International Airport as a new hub following its acquisition of dba ( ATWOnline, Aug. 18), which is based there. According to Focus, the carriers are flying to some 60 destinations combined from the airport, which also is Lufthansa's second hub after Frankfurt. AB is based mainly in Berlin and Nurnberg but also operates around 300 weekly summer flights from Palma de Mallorca, its most important base outside Germany.
BAA believes London Heathrow would struggle to accommodate an influx of US airlines following the signing of open aviation area agreement between the US and EU, The Times reported. According to a BAA internal briefing acquired by the newspaper, demand already exceeds supply at LHR for slots as well as apron and terminal capacity and the airport would be unable to cope with another increase in demand for new services. A BAA spokesperson said the airport operator expects carriers to attempt mass migration from London Gatwick to LHR if and when an OAA deal is reached.
Northwest Airlines and Air France, SkyTeam partners who were rebuffed by the US Dept. of Transportation as part of the alliance's bid for transatlantic antitrust immunity last December ( ATWOnline, Jan. 12), opted to move forward with a codeshare agreement announced yesterday.
Ryanair said it intends to operate a full schedule from London Stansted even if the Bank Holiday strikes against Swissport International occur next weekend ( ATWOnline, Aug. 21). The carrier said it will allow all passengers to use Web check-in and may require them to travel without checked luggage.
FlyMe abandoned its Gothenburg Landvetter-Amsterdam route, citing a lack of profitability. Air Canada will launch thrice-weekly Edmonton-London Heathrow service Oct. 31, increasing to daily from April 1, 2007, using a 767-300ER. SkyEurope Airlines will begin Turin-Prague service from Dec. 26 and a four-times-weekly Rome Fiumicino-Bucharest service on Jan. 12. Jazeera Airways will launch a thrice-weekly Kuwait City-Cochin service Aug. 30 with A320s. The Kuwaiti LCC began operations 10 months ago and flies to 12 destinations.
Correction: Icelandair announced changes to some of its Reykjavik-US service for the winter season. Flights from Baltimore/Washington International will be suspended on Jan. 9 and resume March 8 with four-times-weekly service. Minneapolis-St. Paul service will shut down Jan. 10 and resume March 15 with four-times-weekly flights. Five-times-weekly service from New York JFK will run through Jan. 4, at which time it will be reduced to four-times-weekly. Boston will remain a daily service. An earlier item in ATWOnline contained incorrect information that subsequently was corrected.
Ryanair revealed its intention to take on both "terrorists and extremists" and the UK government in a single press release Friday. Its battle against evil will be waged with the week-long sale of 1 million seats across more than 100 routes for £25 ($47.40) one way including taxes and fees. "Ryanair is releasing these cheap seats to get Britain flying again, which is the best way to defeat terrorists and extremists," the combative airline said.
London Stansted airlines and passengers face yet another wave of disruptions following a vote by the airport's baggage handlers and check-in staff to strike during the August Bank Holiday weekend in a dispute over pay. Some 500 employees of Swissport International represented by GMB and TGWU will conduct separate day-long strikes Aug. 26-27 and again Aug. 28-29, disrupting the Bank Holiday weekend.
Japan Airlines is revising some routes and frequencies from Oct. 29. Subject to regulatory approval, Nagoya-Guangzhou flights will increase from thrice-weekly to daily, Tokyo Narita-Bangkok from 14- to 21-times-weekly and Narita-New Delhi from three to four weekly. It will reduce from 14 to 7 its weekly Narita-Chicago O'Hare flights and suspend its four-times-weekly Nagoya-Manila service.
Emirates is set to increase services to the Asia/Pacific region from Sept. 1. Perth flights will rise from 10-times-weekly to twice-daily, Hong Kong to 17-times-weekly from twice-daily and Kuala Lumpur to nine-times-weekly from eight. The carrier said it intends to raise capacity to Bangkok, Singapore, Jakarta and Manila by year end. JetBlue Airways yesterday launched six-times-daily (five on Sunday) New York JFK-Washington Dulles service aboard Embraer 190s.
US Dept. of Transportation delayed indefinitely its proposed rule intended to ease foreign control restrictions on domestic airlines, a move it had hoped would facilitate an open skies agreement with the EU. Congress passed amendments this summer prohibiting DOT from spending money on the effort for one year ( ATWOnline, July 21). Rep.
Traffic at the main London airports, including Heathrow and Gatwick, suffered a sixth consecutive day of disruptions yesterday, although the number of cancellations declined. The majority of flights at LHR were delayed, with the situation improving in late afternoon. British Airways operated about 90% of its full schedule, dropping three long-haul and 32 short-haul departures. It operated a full long-haul and European schedule from Gatwick with just 11 domestic flights scratched.
Air Deccan launched daily Hyderabad-Coimbatore-Cochin-Hyderabad service aboard an A320, daily Chennai-Vijayawada-Rajahmundry-Chennai flights aboard an ATR 72-500, a second daily ATR 72-500 Delhi-Dehradun flight and daily A320 Bangalore-Pune and Jammu-Srinagar services. In the spring it started flights from its new base at Trivandrum to Delhi via Chennai and to Mumbai via Cochin aboard A320s. WestJet will launch the following routes on Oct.
Airlines operating from London Heathrow and Gatwick airports faced fewer cancellations and improved punctuality Tuesday after BAA relaxed hand luggage restrictions one day later than at most other UK airports, but carriers still complained about delays and long security lines and faulted the airport operator's response to the crisis.
United Airlines yesterday said it applied to operate daily nonstop Washington Dulles-Beijing service beginning in March aboard 747s. It currently operates four daily flights between the countries and announced plans to add 40 weekly transpacific flights following its decision to sell New York JFK-London rights to Delta Air Lines ( ATWOnline, July 31) and transfer its JFK-Tokyo Narita route to IAD starting Oct. 28. Washington is the largest US market without nonstop service to China.
FL Group, the Reykjavik-based parent of Icelandair Group, Sterling Airlines and other aviation and tourism businesses, yesterday reported a second-quarter net profit of just ISK118 million ($1.7 million), narrowed from a profit of ISK1.9 billion in the year-ago period.
Delta Air Lines will add 16 new routes from Los Angeles to 11 Latin American cities, the majority of them in Mexico, and five US destinations during the winter schedule. Flights will be operated with a mix of 737-800s and 50- and 70-seat CRJs flown by Atlantic Southeast Airlines. New service begins in December with flights to La Paz, Liberia in Costa Rica and Las Vegas. By March 8, DL will begin serving Acapulco, Loreto, Mazatlan, Culiacan, Manzanillo, Zacatecas, Hermosillo and Torreon, plus Guatemala City, San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland and San Jose.
India's Jet Airways, which launched service to London last year, confirmed in a weekend statement that it has suspended UK employee Asmin Tariq, who was one of 24 people arrested in London as a suspect in the terrorist conspiracy uncovered last week. Tariq was a security employee absorbed by Jet when the carrier ended its contract with his former employer, G4S, which has relationships with British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, SAS and others, according to Jet.
Expectations that air travel out of the UK was returning to normal over the past weekend proved premature as operations remained disjointed for a fifth consecutive day, particularly at London-area airports where BAA took the draconian step over the weekend of ordering airlines to slash their schedules by 30% to reduce crowding; it later reduced the figure to 20% for Monday and today.
The US Dept. of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration late Sunday revised aviation security requirements put into place following last week's disclosure of the plot to bomb transatlantic flights ( ATWOnline, Aug. 11) and lowered the threat level for flights coming from the UK.
Air Canada announced a 13% year-over-year service increase to vacation destinations during its winter schedule, or nearly 10,000 seats per week. Included in the additions are a new Toronto-Sarasota service starting Nov. 4 and increasing to daily from Dec. 16 on Embraer 190s, thrice-weekly Calgary-Fort Lauderdale flights from Oct. 29 aboard A319s, daily Calgary-Palm Springs service starting Dec. 15 aboard CRJ705s, twice-weekly flights to Las Vegas beginning Sept. 7 from Edmonton with A319s and Winnipeg with CRJ705s and weekly Edmonton-Cancun flights from Dec. 20 aboard a 767.
US airports approached normalcy on Friday, which was "just like any other summer day," according to an Air Transport Assn. spokesperson, as UK Home Secretary John Reid said authorities now believe all the main players in the alleged plot to bomb aircraft flying transatlantic routes to the US have been arrested.
