Service Roundup – Post-Christmas Edition

Happy Holidays to All.

• Spirit Airlines is adding service from Boston’s Logan Airport to Atlantic City International Airport once daily beginning May 1st.
• Spirit is also requesting DOT approval for service from Ft. Lauderdale to Armenia, Columbia to begin in Summer 2009. It will complement their approved service to Medellin, Columbia, which launches March 1st. Spirit also operates to Bogota and Cartegena.
• Spirit will begin seasonal service from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to Myrtle Beach, SC from March 1st through November 11th.
• American Airlines is ramping up service in Boston, reinstating its nonstop Boston to San Diego flight, cancelled in September due to high fuel costs, on April 7th. On that date it will also add a third daily flight to St. Louis, a fourth to Los Angeles, and a ninth to Dallas/Ft. Worth. It will also add a third daily flight to London and resume seasonal service to Paris.
• Not to be outdone, JetBlue announced an increase in Boston flying. Beginning May 1st, they are resuming nonstop service to San Francisco seasonally, and adding a second daily flight to Charlotte, Chicago O’Hare, Pittsburgh, and Raleigh-Durham…a third daily flight to Buffalo and Long Beach, CA…a sixth and seventh daily flight to Washington-Dulles…and a ninth and tenth daily flight to JFK. They will also resume seasonal service to Bermuda and add daily nonstop service to San Juan, Puerto Rico(previously winter only). A new nonstop Saturday only service to St. Maarten begins February 14th, and operates year-round.
• Delta Air Lines will begin daily nonstop service between Detroit and Rome on June 4th. Service will be operated by Northwest, now a Delta subsidiary, using an Airbus 330 in a joint venture with Northwest’s partner KLM.
• Delta is once again trying to beef up service in Los Angeles, with its first ever service to Sydney, Australia, beginning in July, making it the only airline to fly to six continents. It will also add three-times weekly service to Sao Paulo, Brazil on May 21st, and add an eighth daily flight to New York’s JFK airport, to improve connections to its Los Angeles International service from the East Coast. Delta customers in Atlanta will benefit from same plane service between Atlanta and Sydney via Los Angeles.
• An Aeroflot Flight to Moscow returned to its departure city of  Athens on Monday after an anonymous bomb threat was made. No bomb was found after a thorough search.
• South African Airways announced new nonstop service from New York’s JFK Airport to Johannesburg, beginning May 1st. While this flight will now operate nonstop, the return flight will make a stop in Dakar, Senegal. Connections as a result of the nonstop will be available to: Cape Town, South Africa; Libreville, Gabon; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Durban, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Entebbe, Uganda; East London, South Africa; Blantyre, Malawi; Livingstone, Zambia; George, South Africa; Lilongwe, Malawi; Lusaka, Zambia. Hoedspruit, South Africa; Walvis Bay, Namibia. Bulawayo, Zimbabw Nelspruit (Kruger Mpumalanga), South Africa; Windhoek, Namibia; Beira, Mozambique; Harare, Zimbabwe; Port Elizabeth, South Africa; Maputo, Mozambique; Gaborone, Botswana; and Pemba, Mozambique.