The announcement late last month by American Airlines that it is to significantly grow capacity into Evansville Regional Airport in Vanderburgh County, Indiana, highlights the successful (and essential) role that connectivity plays in supporting smaller airports across the United States of America and the world.
The US DOT formally instituted a slot assignment proceeding earlier this month to allocate a total of 28 slot pairs at the two airports. These are being released in a two phase process for operations from summer 2017 and summer 2018 and will be provided exclusively to low-cost carriers, which it believes exert the greatest competitive impact when entering slot-constrained markets.
According to reports, Croatia Airlines is selling its London Heathrow Airport mid-morning slots on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, retaining afternoon and evening slots on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The sold slots will pass to Delta Air Lines from April 1, 2017 and will enable the US major to grow its joint transatlantic network with Virgin Atlantic from London’s largest airport.
After five decades and over 45 years flying variants of the Boeing 747 since the type’s debut in United Airlines operation on flights between California and Hawaii in 1970, the carrier says new technology, and notably the arrival of the 777-300ER into its fleet means now is the right time to retire the iconic airliner.
Analysis of schedule data from intelligence provider OAG shows that Aeromexico and Delta Air Lines had a combined 27.8 per cent share of seat capacity out of New York's John F Kennedy International Airport last summer and a 42.2 per cent share at Mexico City's Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez. The two airlines are the largest individual operators at the airports in their home markets.
Over 18,000 face-to-face meetings are expected to take place at Routes events in 2017. Don’t miss your opportunity to engage with your key targets next year.
The major American carrier has announced it will cancel service at Tokyo-Narita from New York-JFK, and to Osaka and Bangkok in autumn. The decision comes a few weeks after Delta has been tentatively awarded daytime service to Tokyo-Haneda.
Network growth across both its domestic and international markets has helped boost traffic at Detroit Metropolitan Airport during the first half of this year. Latest data from the airport operator shows an additional 817,000 passengers were handled over the first six months of the year versus the same period in 2015, a rise of 5.1 percent.
A new fifth daytime slot pair for scheduled service to and from Haneda International Airport in Tokyo has been preliminary awarded to Delta Air Lines for flights from Minneapolis-St Paul, ahead of another Delta proposition from Atlanta, American Airlines from Dallas and United Airlines from Newark.
The new flight will commence from May 26, 2017 and will be flown using a 164-seat Boeing 757-200ER. It will be operated in conjunction with its Transatlantic joint venture partner Virgin Atlantic Airways, adding to the UK carrier’s seasonal service from Glasgow to Orlando.
Delta and Virgin Atlantic’s joint venture is based around offering customers more options and a seamless experience between the US and the UK. The airlines are continuously evaluating their joint Transatlantic network to match the right aircraft to the right destinations and the summer 2017 network growth and route switches are a clear example of this.
Following years of losses, lack of investment and the consolidation of carriers, US airlines are once again making money and better positioning themselves for when the next downturn comes, as Routes News discovered.
With only 110 daily flights to Cuba on offer, some of the biggest players in the US market are fighting for the coveted spots. Thirteen carriers will go head to head for the slots, with American Airlines leading the requests, hoping to cater to the vast Cuban-American population of Miami
Any new company would retain the Virgin brand but be run at a lower cost as a different corporate entity with different employee contracts. It could operate with a small fleet of twin-engined widebody equipment transferred across from Delta’s mainline fleet to help lower its operating costs if the go-ahead is given.
The newly available daytime slots at Haneda herald a potential transformation in US air service to the Japanese capital and the regulator wants to start with a blank canvas so it can look at all options and explore opportunities for alternative US cities that are capable of supporting commercially viable service to Tokyo.
This will be Delta’s fifth daily nonstop flight to the Asia-Pacific region and will add to existing links to Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo; the latter being served by flights to both Haneda and Narita airports. The Shanghai service was only added in July 2015, and Delta will be the only carrier to offer service to both of China’s biggest cities from Los Angeles.
The Gulf carrier is both the world’s strongest and most valuable brand, with an increase of 17 percent from 2015. Emirates brand value is weighted at $7,743 million.
Delta plans to use the type to replace older less-efficient domestic Boeing 757 aircraft that are being retired from Delta's fleet and, according to its flight schedule inventory will configure them in a two-class arrangement with 20 First Class seats and 169 Economy seats, including extra-legroom seats in its Economy Comfort cabin.
A historic deal has been reached this week after three days of talks in Washington that opens the way for US airlines to negotiate with Cuba's government to operate up to 20 routes a day to Havana and ten too each of Cuba's other nine major airports, according to State Department officials. These will be in addition to the current limited charter programmes that have been serving the countries while hefty sanctions have been in place.
Seattle is now on the route maps of ten air carriers from outside the Americas, including major brands like All Nippon Airways, Condor, Emirates, Hainan Airlines, Icelandair, Lufthansa and Korean Air which have added to long-standing routes from Asiana Airlines, British Airways and EVA Air. A lasting legacy for managing director, Mark Reis as he steps down from the helm during February 2016.
Denver International Airport has had a strong year post hosting Routes Americas and recently announced the return of an important European hub link to Munich with Lufthansa. Earlier this month it announced record traffic with the busiest September in Denver aviation history.
The carrier is reducing its capacity into Brazil this winter through route switches, frequency reductions and aircraft changes in preparation for what its vice-president of Latin America, Mexico and Caribbean, Nicolas Ferri describes as a “long cycle” economic slowdown in the country, in an interview posted on the airline’s website.
After Delta recently reduced service between the world’s busiest airport and the largest international airport, the carrier has now confirmed it will end the route from February 11, 2016. It said the Boeing 777 used on this city pair will be redeployed to other Transatlantic markets where it can “compete on a level playing field that’s not distorted by subsidised state-owned airlines”.
The new route to Paris will commence in May 2016 and will supplement the existing London route operated by rival carrier, American Airlines. The daily flight will launch on May 12, 2016 and will be operated using a 164-seat Boeing 757-200ER in conjunction with the airline's joint venture partners Air France, KLM and Alitalia.
