AIRLINE NEWS

ALL NIPPON AIRWAYS will begin operating direct flights between Tokyo Narita and Mexico City – the longest flights in its network – starting February 15. The Japanese carrier is the first airline to offer direct daily flights between Japan and Mexico. CHINA AIRLINES and KLM are set to cooperate more closely following a codeshare agreement that offers passengers a choice of 11 weekly services. The Taiwanese carrier is also set to launch its non-stop Taipei–Amsterdam route on January 9, 2017. FLYDUBAI has begun operating a double daily B737800 service between Dubai and Bangkok, the first route by the airline to operate twice a day outside of the Gulf region. HONG KONG AIRLINES will expand its services to North America in 2017 starting with a new daily direct service to Vancouver, which will begin June 30. The airline will be deploying its A330-200 on the route, though it may switch to an A350 once it takes delivery of its first one in August. LATAM will begin operating a direct three-times-weekly service between Santiago and Melbourne, which at 11,000km and 15 hours’ duration is the longest in Latam’s history. OMAN AIR began flying its new Muscat–Guangzhou route in early December, running it four times per week using its A330. QANTAS and AMERICAN AIRLINES have had their bid to expand their joint venture blocked by the US Department of Transportation. The department ruled that the move would potentially create an antitrust environment that would leave passengers with few competitive options, given that the venture would account for about 60 per cent of seats between the US and Australia. QATAR AIRWAYS has announced it is adding eight new routes in 2017, including Canberra, Dublin, Las Vegas, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, Medan, Tabuk and Yanbu (the latter two in Saudi Arabia). The carrier has also begun allowing customers to pay for bookings with their mobile devices using Apple Pay. ROYAL JORDANIAN is axing two of its Asia-Pacific services – to Guangzhou and Jakarta – from January 10 due to financial reasons, effectively ceasing the Jordanian carrier’s services to mainland China and Indonesia. SINGAPORE AIRLINES has been forced to cut five weekly services – flights SQ962 and SQ963 – from its Jakarta route due to runway maintenance at SoekarnoHatta International Airport. TRANS ASIA AIRWAYS, a Taiwanese carrier that has been facing financial losses since its flights crashed in Magong in 2014 and Taipei in 2015, has now shut down. By the end of October, the airline was estimated to be losing approximately US$313,000 each day. UNITED AIRLINES has opened its recently renovated lounge at Los Angeles International Airport as part of a US$573 million project to refurbish all customer-facing spaces at Terminals 7 and 8. The new lounge is one of the airline’s largest at 1,900 sqm. VIETNAM AIRLINES recently received its tenth B787-9 Dreamliner aircraft, the first of a further nine B787-9s and eight B787-10s the carrier has on order. The airline is planning to launch Dreamliner flights to Australia in 2017.