Elysair, a French version of all-business-class carriers Maxjet Airways and Eos, is expected to take to the skies in October, La Tribune, reported. French DGAC awarded an AOC on Feb. 22. Elysair initially intends to launch a Paris Orly-Newark service aboard a single-class 757. If successful, it plans to operate to Los Angeles, Dubai and Sao Paulo.
MAXJet Airways rescheduled the March 15 launch of its all-business-class service between Washington Dulles and London Stansted to April 3. The carrier said the postponement is due to "finalizing servicing and outfitting of the new aircraft." Frequency was raised from four-times-weekly to five.
Air Canada launched daily New York JFK-Calgary service Wednesday using a 93-seat Embraer 190. Emirates will operate eight-times-weekly service to Bangalore beginning Oct. 29 using both A330-200s and 777-200s. Frontier Airlines will launch twice-daily Denver-Calgary service from May 25. Flights will be operated by Horizon Air as Frontier JetExpress. Air Baltic started four weekly flights from Riga to Dusseldorf on March 1 using 737-500s.
UK CAA maintained its support for a mostly hands-off approach to the buying, selling and trading of airport operating slots among airlines in a new report co-authored with the UK Office of Fair Trading. "In the main, the fewer restrictions on secondary trading, the greater the likely efficiency benefits," the authorities argued in the report.
Air Canada Regional affiliate Jazz officially is out of Toronto's close-in City Centre Airport following a court ruling earlier this week clearing the way for startup Porter Airlines to begin operations this fall sans competition. "We are certainly looking at it as a temporary suspension," Jazz spokesperson Debra Williams told ATWOnline.
US Airways is increasing its Hawaii service with the launch of daily Las Vegas-Kahului flights, the addition of a second daily Phoenix-Honolulu flight and new daily services from PHX to Lihue and Kona, all aboard 757-200s. EasyJet will launch four-times-weekly service between Basel-Mulhouse and Istanbul from May 24, daily London Luton-Istanbul flights from June 29, four-times-weekly Luton-Rijeka service from June 30 and daily London Gatwick-Marrakech service beginning July 4.
Determined to continue to give Phoenix air travelers the high level of customer service they now enjoy, Sky Harbor International Airport's managers are upgrading and expanding terminal facilities to keep up with the airport's 5% annual growth rate. FAA approval is expected this month for a new terminal complex, taxiway system and people-mover.
JetBlue Airways has built a reputation as an airline that places a premium on customer service: A relatively new fleet of aircraft with roomy leather seats, 36-channel LiveTV at every seat, XM Satellite Radio, unlimited onboard snacks. Now the carrier has put its own stamp on the concession and retail program at its JFK Terminal 6 base.
Cairo International Airport has a clear-cut ambition: "We want to become both a passenger and cargo hub, particularly in the MENA region," says Ibrahim Ahmed Manaa, chairman of Egyptian Holding Co. for Airports and Air Navigation. "We want to rise to global competitive levels according to international standards and start to gradually apply air transport liberalization policies."
Frontier Airlines knows that its customers are quite enamored with the animals pasted on the tails of its aircraft. With help from Denver International, the carrier now hopes to bring that brand recognition inside the airport.
Delta Air Lines is not slashing capacity on its New York-Florida routes as previously reported ( ATWOnline, Feb. 28). Rather, it said it inadvertently left Comair's New York LaGuardia schedules out of its recent schedule filing, an error that was amplified when it was picked up on Wall Street, where analysts viewed it as a plus for JetBlue Airways.
Singapore Airlines will offer thrice-weekly service to Abu Dhabi starting today. Etihad Airways will start four-times-weekly Abu Dhabi-Jakarta service on March 16 aboard an A330-200. Indonesia AirAsia will introduce daily Medan-Penang and Kuala Lumpur-Surabaya services from March 10. It also plans to launch Surabaya-Balikpapan service and increase frequencies between Jakarta and Surabaya from thrice-daily to four-times-daily. It operates five 737-300s.
American Airlines will launch daily Chicago O'Hare-Shanghai service the night of April 2 aboard 777s. Tarom announced a four-times-weekly 737 service from Bucharest to Barcelona starting with the summer schedule. Together with codeshare partner Austrian Airlines, Tarom will offer four weekly services from Iasi to Vienna, five from Sibiu to Vienna and five on the Cluj-Vienna sector. It also increased the number of frequencies to Athens, Thessaloniki, Munich, Larnaca, Dubai, Amman, Cairo, Budapest and Warsaw
SAS Ground Services signed a three-year agreement with Lufthansa covering operations at Copenhagen, Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Stockholm and Gothenburg. LH is SAS Ground Services' biggest customer outside SAS Group carriers.
Air Berlin will launch six-times-weekly services from Berlin and Hamburg to Copenhagen as well as a twice-daily Dusseldorf-Copenhagen service from May 2. Daily Berlin-Helsinki flights also will commence in May. Iceland Express will launch a twice-weekly service from Akureyri to Copenhagen on May 30 using MD-90-30s.
Austrian Airlines will delay its new services from Vienna to Erbil. Flights to the Kurdistan region were scheduled to start March 12. Austrian would have been the first European carrier to offer direct flights to Iraq ( ATWOnline, Jan. 10) and said it has not given up on launching the route at a later date. Separately, Austrian and Croatia Airlines will increase codeshare operations on the Vienna-Split route to nine flights per week and on Vienna-Dubrovnik to eight weekly flights.
Copa Airlines will launch daily services from Panama City to Manaus from June 15, Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, also from June 15, and Port of Spain from July 7, all aboard Embraer 190s. JetBlue Airways will begin four-times-daily New York JFK-Portland, Maine, service from May 23. Emirates will codeshare with Oman Air on the route between Dubai and Muscat.
Southwest Airlines announced a further ramp-up of its New Orleans and Chicago Midway schedules as part of 15 new flights announced yesterday. It will launch daily Las Vegas-Orlando service April 28, daily Midway-Orange County service May 25 and daily service from New Orleans to Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Baltimore/Washington International and Midway June 10.
JetBlue Airways will launch daily Washington Dulles-Las Vegas, daily Boston-Phoenix and twice-daily New York LaGuardia-Orlando services from May 3. It will add frequencies to destinations from New York JFK, Newark, Boston and Dulles at the same time. Emirates will add a second daily Dubai-Dusseldorf flight beginning May 1 aboard an A330-200. It operates a 777-300 on the other flight.
Lufthansa and Air Malta signed an MOU Tuesday in Malta to begin a "bilateral cooperation" that will start with the adjustment of their schedules to give passengers of each airline the "opportunity to increase connections to worldwide destinations." Lufthansa VP Joachim Steinbach said LH hopes to integrate Air Malta into the new Terminal 2 in Munich. In addition, the two are planning to introduce codeshare flights from November.
Air France-KLM Group said it will pursue a "profitable growth strategy" during the summer by boosting capacity 5.6% over summer 2005, comprising a 6% increase on its long-haul network, a 6.3% rise on its international medium-haul network and a 1.1% increase domestically. Long-haul growth, including a 19.7% ramp-up in capacity to the Middle East, will come from additional frequencies and larger aircraft. KLM will offer a new destination, Chengdu, with twice-weekly service from Amsterdam. The group will offer 47 weekly flights to China.
Continental Airlines said it will return to its pre-Hurricane Katrina departure frequency from New Orleans by May. It operated 111 flights per week from MSY prior to the storm and now has reached 86% of its former capacity.
American Eagle will begin daily New York JFK-Baltimore/Washington service from April 3 aboard 37-seat ERJs. Jet2.com will launch Belfast-Tenerife service next winter. It also will increase its Belfast-Blackpool service to daily throughout the summer. Virgin Express is upping frequency for its new Brussels-Palermo route from two to three times weekly. Service will commence March 29.
Gol announced the expansion of its Gollog cargo operation to Rosario, Cordoba, Montevideo and Asuncion. Gollog is a pre-paid, online freight service the carrier unveiled earlier this month ( ATWOnline, Feb. 6). It already was available on Gol flights to 38 Brazilian destinations and Buenos Aires.
