Big changes on horizon for Frontier, Hawaiian
Airlines constantly tweak their schedules, trying to find profitable new routes or pulling the plug on ones that have underperformed. Airports and communities court these new services.
There are dozens of changes to airline routes each month. Here’s a look at some of the most interesting: FRONTIER TWEAKS ITS MAP Frontier Airlines unveiled a major expansion that the company says will add 21 destinations and 85 routes to the carrier’s network. With that, the number of cities on Frontier’s route map will swell to 82 by next summer.
Of the 21 destinations, 18 are cities the company had served previously before discontinuing service. The three new cities joining Frontier’s route map are Buffalo; Charleston, S.C.; and Pensacola, Fla.
Elsewhere, Frontier is adding dozens of routes between cities it serves. Among destinations getting a significant bump up in service are Austin, Cincinnati, Denver, Long Island/Islip, N.Y., Miami, Orlando, Providence, San Antonio and Tampa.
Some of the announced service will be enabled by new aircraft and by reducing frequencies on routes. The carrier will ax 18 routes and discontinue 32 for the winter schedule, an analysis by the FlightGlobal trade publication found. Two destinations — Fort Lauderdale and Punta Gorda, Fla. — will be dropped altogether as Frontier shifts its service from those cities to near- by airports in Miami and Fort Myers, respectively. UNITED ADDS ON TO EUROPE United is strengthening its transAtlantic schedule at two of its hubs where it faces encroaching discount competition.
From Denver, United plans to add seasonal non-stop service to London Heathrow. The route will be flown with a Boeing 787-8 jet from March 24 through Oct. 16, pending regulatory approvals.
At Newark Liberty, United will extend its service to Rome. United says the route — which had been scheduled to end Nov. 8 before resuming in the spring — will continue throughout the fall and winter.
United’s moves come after fast-growing European low-cost carrier Norwegian Air recently announced its own plans to fly competing routes.
Norwegian’s Denver-London Gatwick service will launch Sept. 16, and its Rome-Newark route will begin Nov. 9. EUROPE FOR LESS THAN $100? The latest European budget airline to set its sights on the U.S. markets is an outfit called Primera Air. The Latvian-based company announced plans for six European-U.S. routes starting in 2018.
Primera says it will add three routes from both Newark Liberty and Boston, flying from each of those airports to London Stansted, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Birmingham, England.
The airline’s first Newark flights will begin April 19, and its Boston debut will be May 18. All six of the routes will launch by late June and will be flown on new Airbus A321neo single-aisle jets that seat 198 passengers.
Tickets are on sale, and Primera advertises prices as low as $99 one-way, though the availability of those fares is sparse.
Bargain seekers be warned: Primera charges extra for nearly everything beyond entrance to its planes. Customers booking Primera’s cheapest fares are allowed a carry-on of 22 pounds or less, but a checked bag is $45 each way. Booking fares with a credit card adds $12, and meals on Primera’s trans-Atlantic flights come with a $40 price tag.
Selecting a seat in advance begins at $45 per flight, and Primera’s A321neos will have some of the tightest seats in the sky — even by domestic standards. The carrier’s standard economy seats will feature just 30 inches of seat pitch, a common industry measure of space. DELTA ADDS TO BOSTON Delta Air Lines is ramping up its presence in Boston with new routes to Pittsburgh and New Orleans.
The flights to Pittsburgh will begin Oct. 1 as Delta Connection affiliate Endeavor Air offers two daily round-trip flights on Bombardier CRJ 900 regional jets. The New Orleans service will be seasonal, operating only on Saturdays and Sundays from Feb. 10 through April 1.
The new service comes amid heightened competition at Boston’s Logan International Airport, where JetBlue has grown in recent years to become the top carrier. Delta seeks to expand its presence in Boston, where it is the No. 3 airline behind JetBlue and American.
Delta focuses on business traffic for the route to Pittsburgh, which the carrier says “is a top business destination from Boston.” American and JetBlue fly non-stop between Boston and Pittsburgh, though Delta took a swipe at its rivals by noting its Delta Connection regional jets will have “the only first-class product on the route.”
Delta says its weekend-only seasonal service to New Orleans will cater to “strong leisure demand.” On that route, Delta’s flights will be on Embraer E175 jets flown by regional affiliate Republic Airlines. HAWAIIAN TO GET NEW JETS Hawaiian Airlines will expand its non-stop options between the state’s smaller airports and the U.S. West Coast. The Honolulubased airline says the three yearround routes will be enabled by its new Airbus A321neo jets, due to begin arriving to the company by the end of the year.
Hawaiian’s inaugural flight on the A321neo will be Jan. 8, when it begins flying the jet between Oakland and Kahului on the island of Maui. Hawaiian uses Boeing 767 aircraft between those airports but has begun phasing out that widebody model.
The first of the new year-round services Hawaiian is launching with the A321neo will come Jan. 18, when the carrier will start non-stop flights between Portland, Ore., and Kahului. Hawaiian’s second new A321neo route will launch March 11 with a nonstop route connecting Los Angeles and Kona on the “Big Island” of Hawaii.
On April 11, Hawaiian will put its A321neos into operation between Oakland and Lihue on the island of Kauai. Hawaiian already flies between those destinations, but it does so only on a seasonal schedule that’s scheduled to end Sept. 4. When flights resume in April, Hawaiian will offer yearround service on the route.