Midwest Airlines is adding a fifth roundtrip to service from Milwaukee to both Philadelphia and Omaha beginning October 1st. The new service will be offered on 50-seat CRJ-200 regional jets, featuring brown leather seats, chef-prepared buy-onboard Best Care Cuisine meals and baked-on-board chocolate chip cookies.
Continental Airlines has upgraded its website to allow passengers who have had their flights disrupted to change their flights online. The system allows them to recognize when it is appropriate too waive change fees or additional fare collections. Many airlines are unveiling such systems to compensate for reduced staff at airports and long hold times during periods of disruption.
American Airlines announced service beginning December 13th from Dallas/Ft. Worth. Service to Panama City, Panama will operate four days a week, and service to Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands once a week.
American will also begin nonstop service from Phoenix to Miami the same day,
Southwest will add nonstop service between Raleigh/Durham and Ft. Lauderdale on February 4th, bringing it into competition with newly announced seasonal service on the same route by Jetblue. Delta also operates this route.
The same day, Southwest will add a daily roundtrip between Buffalo and Ft. Lauderdale…where it will also compete with recently announced Jetblue service. We are curious to see how competition works for the two discounters.
Two Alaska Airlines jets bumped into each other as one pulled away from the gate at LAX on Monday. Both planes suffered damage and must be repaired. Passengers were rebooked, and the FAA will investigate.
A correction to our comments of yesterday. We forgot that Southwest in its new SFO-LAX service will face competition from upstart Virgin America with six flights ago. The Cranky Flier has a great analysis of the comparison. Virgin has a four hour gap without flights in mid morning, and their last flight is at 6:25PM…compared to Southwest’s 7:55PM, and never going more than two hours without a flight. If you are willing to forego the in-flight entertainment(and who needs it on such a short flight), it seems Southwest will prevail. Southwest seems to agree. In their blog, they compare the changes in the SFO-LAX market from 1979 to the present. Interesting for history buffs. For those who aren’t…it’ll be very cheap to fly the route with all the competition right now.
As Today in the Sky reports, the Vatican-backed charter airline took its first flight yesterday. The aim is to make pilgrimages more affordable, but the charter carrier will face the same problems as any other. Ryanair commented, “Ryanair already performs miracles that even the Pope’s boss can’t rival, by delivering pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela for the heavenly price of €10 (about $14).”