- Airtran will be the first to serve Cherry Coke and Cherry Coke Zero onboard all flights effective this month. We just love the fact that it is big news which soft drinks an airline has…probably bigger for the airlines that don’t give you any.
- United raised fares on popular business routes by up to $50 each way. So far, its competitors have not matched, which means it may not take.
- Spirit has announced new nonstop service to Lima, Peru daily beginning June 27th.
- Air Canada has announced two new daily nonstop flights from St. John’s to Deer Lake, operated by Exploits Valley Air Service using 18-seat Beechcraft aircraft.
- US Airways is expanding its seasonal service to Ireland from Philadelphia to year round service. Philadelphia to Dublin service will operate four times a week beginning October 28th. Shannon will be served seasonally during the summer season. US Airways is the only carrier that serves Ireland from Philadelphia.
- United will be adding daily nonstop passenger and cargo service between Los Angeles and Hong Kong and Washington and Rio de Janiero will begin October 2007.
- Jetblue inaugurated service to San Francisco with four daily flights to New York City and one daily flight to Boston. It will add its previously announced Salt Lake City service on July 27th.
- MAXjet will begin Los Angeles-London flights on August 30th. It will also add a Sunday frequency between Las Vegas and London on September 2nd. Finally, service to Washington Dulles will resume on September 2nd and will be year-round instead of seasonal. MAXjet operates all business class service to London’s Stansted airport.
- Alitalia’s flight attendants are on strike, grounding nearly half of their flights…356 today. The strike is expected to continue until tomorrow. Alitalia already loses more than one million euro a day.
- Delta inaugurated its service from Atlanta to Prague yesterday. It is the first of 14 international routes it will open up between now and June.
- Airtran is expanding service between Kansas City and Orlando, Miami, and Ft. Myers. Airtran will initiate Orlando service on May 8th, with a second daily flight on November 7th…the day the Miami and Ft. Myers flights will begin. Airtran’s ramp-up in Kansas City may have something to do with its aggressive bid for Midwest Airlines. Midwest claims Kansas City as a focus city.
- Four Jetblue employees and a city corrections officer have been charged with stealing credit card information from airline passengers. Investigators began looking at the group after one traveler rushing to catch a flight accidentally left his credit card behind at a JetBlue counter at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Later, someone used the card to run up $508 in charges. Three of the Jetblue employees are customer service agents and the fourth is a flight attendant. Jetblue has suspended the employees. We hope that is a precursor to termination, pending the results of the criminal proceedings.
- US Airports planning to accomodate the Airbus 380 expect restrictions for other aircraft operating near the superjumbo that may increase ground delays. At certain already congested airports…this could have a serious impact during peak departure and arrival periods.
- British Airways raised fuel surcharges on longhaul flights on Wednesday. Flights of less than nine hours will increase by 10% to 33 pounds($66) per flight and by 8.6 percent to 38 pounds($76) on longer flights.
- David Neeleman last week posted commentary on his blog about the issue of cell phones on planes. LiveTV, Jetblue’s wholly owned subsidiary that specializes in In-Flight Entertainment, as we reported last year, has 1MHz of radio spectrum. He claims that Jetblue would prefer to make any option it installs free for its customers. Their goal is to implicate silent options…ie text messaging…and do it without large implementation and maintenance costs.
