America West Airlines began daily nonstop service between Las Vegas and Monterey. America West Express, operated by Mesa Airlines, is operating the new flights using 86-seat CRJ900s.
Frontier Airlines will launch three weekly flights between Denver and Cozumel Dec. 17. In addition, the carrier will resume seasonal service to Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo on Nov. 19, adding a weekly flight versus November 2004 for a total of three per week. It also will increase service from Denver to Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta from Dec. 17 with an additional Saturday frequency during peak periods to complement daily service to both destinations, and will offer three daily flights to Cancun from Denver during the peak winter periods.
Midwest Airlines will boost weekday service from Milwaukee to Newark to four flights and from Kansas City to Los Angeles to three flights. Also, the carrier will upgrade to 717s on its fourth weekday flight between Milwaukee and Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Virgin Atlantic and its Australian sister airline Virgin Blue signed a codeshare agreement under which Virgin Atlantic, which currently flies daily from London Heathrow to Sydney via Hong Kong, will add its code to Virgin Blue flights from Sydney to Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Cairns, Gold Coast and Coolangatta. The agreement will go into effect July 17.
Continental Airlines launched daily nonstop service between Newark and Beijing using 777s. The new flight is part of the carrier's major international expansion, which also includes the launch of six new transatlantic routes between May and November.
A live test of e-passports that contain computer chips with biographic and biometric information began yesterday at Terminals 2, 4 and 7 at Los Angeles International Airport and at Sydney Airport in Australia. The test will run through Sept. 15. Volunteers participating in the test include airline crew and officials of United Airlines, Air New Zealand and Qantas. They will present their new e-passports when arriving in the US through LAX or upon arrival in Australia through Sydney.
Delta Air Lines launched daily nonstop flights between Louisville and New York JFK yesterday. The flights are operated by Delta Connection carrier Comair using CRJs.
Sterling Airlines will lease two 767-300s to start long-haul flights, including a daily Copenhagen-Orlando service, for the upcoming winter schedule. The carrier also plans to start a weekly Copenhagen-Salzburg service.
Delta Air Lines will launch daily nonstop service between Salt Lake City and Puerto Vallarta Nov. 1. Separately, Delta added several new features to its website that allow customers to make online ticket changes and calculate frequent-flier mileage. Also, in addition to checking in for Delta's domestic US flights via the website, passengers can now check in for flight segments when their Delta flights connect to Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Northwest Airlines and US Airways.
Frontier Airlines flew 614.9 million RPMs in May, up 26.3% over the year-ago period. Capacity climbed 8.3% to 804.2 million ASMs and load factor rose 10.9 points to 76.5%. For the five months ended May 31, RPMs increased 21.9% to 2.83 billion, ASMs rose 12.3% to 3.79 billion and load factor gained 5 points to 74.8%.
Adria Airways introduced a number of new seasonal weekly flights from Ljubljana to Al Aqabah, Lamezia Terme and Simferopol. It also started flights from Dublin to Naples, Verona and Catania. The majority of the flights are operated by 162-seat A320s.
Siemens Logistics and Assembly Systems' Airport Logistics division completed the inline baggage security screening system upgrade at Denver International Airport. The $88 million project was finished in 20 months.
Kinetics last week introduced CheckinHere, its new kiosk solution that provides multi-airline check-in, prints boarding passes and provides baggage services for passengers at off-airport locations such as hotels, car rental stations and cruise line ports.
