This week: Kuala Lumpur – Tianjin route launched; LATAM Airlines strengthens its connectivity between Colombia and Peru; and JetBlue adds second Ecuador route.
This week: Air India is to resume flights from Mumbai to Frankfurt after an absence of eight years; Avianca adds Chicago service; and Spirit to increase Colombia flights.
US low-cost carrier Spirit is to further expand its service to Colombia later this year, with plans to open a fifth destination in the South American country.
Gulf carrier Emirates Airline is cutting back on its schedules to the United States of America, blaming policies introduced by President Trump's administration for hurting bookings. Daily flights from Dubai to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando will be cut to five a week. Flights to Seattle, Boston and Los Angeles will now be once a day, instead of twice.
Spirit Airlines will introduce its low-fare offering into Hartford at the start of the second quarter with daily flights from Orlando and a summer seasonal four times weekly link from Myrtle Beach launching on April 27, 2017. A daily link to Fort Lauderdale will follow from June 15, 2017.
European low-cost carrier Norwegian is set to open four new operational bases – two in the US and two in Europe – in 2017 to support the growth of its long-haul transatlantic network. The internal go-ahead for the expansion follows the final approval late last week by the US Department of Transportation for a foreign carrier permit for the airline’s Norwegian Air International business.
Emirates Airline's new daily link between Dubai International Airport and Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport will commence from December 15, 2016 and will primarily serve the South Florida area, including Fort Lauderdale, Miami and West Palm Beach. It will be the airline’s eleventh direct route into the US.
Budget carrier Norwegian has this week announced details of its latest long-haul European base with transatlantic flights launching to five destinations in the United States of America from June 2017. Airports from across Europe continue to pitch in a competitive battle to make use of the carrier’s ever increasing Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet, but on this occasion it is Barcelona that has come out the winner.
JetBlue confirms it will take delivery of ten additional Airbus A321s in 2017 and nine of these will be configured in its MINT arrangement to be introduced on routes to Las Vegas, San Diego and Seattle from New York; to San Diego and Seattle from Boston and to Los Angeles and San Francisco from Fort Lauderdale.
JetBlue has more than doubled its activities from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International over the past ten years and has grown capacity 78.3 per cent since the start of the decade, an average annual rise of 15.7 per cent. Its departure capacity was up 15.1 percent last year as Albany, Baltimore, Charleston, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Providenciales were all added as new destinations.
Ecuador is growing in stature as a major emerging regional tourism destination in South America. And the future for Quito is looking bright, with over $87 million in hotel investment announced over the next 10 years.
With Southwest Airlines announcing at Routes Americas the launch of a new daily non-stop service between Fort Lauderdale and Nassau in The Bahamas starting on August 7, 2016 Routesonline takes a closer look at how Lynden Pindling International Airport is driving growth.
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.
Allegiant Air’s low-cost business model has allowed it to grow from one aircraft and one route 16 years ago, to offering access to low-cost, non-stop travel over 100 communities nationwide, more than any other domestic low-cost carrier. The airline operation is complement by the Allegiant Travel proposition that offers holiday packages alongside the flight options.
The proposed Eurowings link to Fort Lauderdale will be the first service from Cologne to Hollywood International Airport and only the second direct scheduled link from Germany alongside the seasonal offering of Condor from Frankfurt. Norwegian also links Fort Lauderdale to Europe with flights from Copenhagen, London, Oslo and Stockholm.
This year has already seen JetBlue introduce flights from Fort Lauderdale to Albany, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Mexico City, Nashville and Philadelphia. These have quickly followed the launch of services to Jacksonsville, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh late last year.
The carrier will introduce daily services from Albany International Airport to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Orlando International Airport from December 10, 2015 using 150-seat Airbus A320 equipment. Elsewhere in the Empire State, JetBlue serves airports in Buffalo; Newburgh; New York City (LaGuardia and Kennedy); Rochester; Syracuse; and Westchester County.
In partnership with our Airline Route blog, Routesonline is launching a new weekly 'Historic Airline Schedule Snapshot' as part of our Throwback Thursday series, where we look back at the historic flight operations of a current or defunct airline.
The carrier has traditionally focused almost exclusively on connecting small and medium-sized cities to its focus airports located mostly in leisure destinations across the United States. However, this latest expansion continues a recent trend of introducing flights into larger markets.
