Southwest gearing up for flights to Hawaii
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:
Southwest reveals more of its Hawaii plans
Southwest Airlines will eventually fly to four airports in Hawaii once it launches its service to the state.
The four Hawaii destinations will be Honolulu (island of Oahu), Kahului (Maui), Lihue (Kauai) and Kona (Hawaii’s “Big Island”).
Southwest didn’t reveal specific dates or routes, but its plans for Hawaii have been highly anticipated ever since the airline announced its intent to fly there in 2017.
CEO Gary Kelly said last week that the company’s first Hawaii flights will begin later this year or in early 2019 and start with just one route between the West Coast and one destination in Hawaii.
“We would like to ramp up pretty rapidly and, ultimately, to those four airports,” he said.
For Southwest, the flights to Hawaii will give the carrier its most significant service expansion since it began flying internationally in 2014. The airline now serves numerous destinations across Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
Hawaii is one of the top leisure destinations for U.S. travelers. Southwest officials say Hawaii flights have long been a top request from the carrier’s frequent fliers.
JetBlue adds three cities amid Los Angeles-area shakeup
Three western cities — Ontario, Calif., Steamboat Springs, Colo., and Bozeman, Mont. — will be added to JetBlue’s route map later this year as the airline adjusts its Western strategy.
JetBlue is shaking up its service to the Los Angeles area with one-fourth fewer flights at its Long Beach focus city and more at other regional airports in the area.
The changes include the resumption of flights at Ontario, more cross-country flights at Burbank and the expansion of seasonal service to Palm Springs.
At the Ontario International Airport, about 40 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, JetBlue will add one daily round-trip flight to its busiest hub at New York JFK. JetBlue last served Ontario in 2008.
In the Rockies, JetBlue will fly three seasonal routes from the Yampa Valley Airport near Colorado’s ski resort of Steamboat Springs. Wintertime service to Boston, Fort Lauderdale and Long Beach will start Dec. 15. Boston and Long Beach get two flights a week, while the Fort Lauderdale schedule features Saturday-only service.
The addition of Bozeman will give JetBlue its first presence in Montana. The carrier will offer two flights a week to Long Beach from Dec. 13 through the end of its winter schedule.
Elsewhere, JetBlue will trim its number of daily departures at Long Beach from 34 to around 23. The reductions come after the Long Beach City Council voted in January 2017 against a Customs facility for international flights that JetBlue hoped would allow it to add flights to Mexico. JetBlue will not drop any destinations from Long Beach but will instead reduce the number of flights on routes it already serves.
Latin America gets more American
American Airlines, already one of the top U.S. carriers to Mexico and Latin America, is expanding its footprint in the region with six new year-round routes.
The airline’s hub in Miami will get half of those, with four weekly Airbus
A319 flights to Georgetown, Guyana, and three to Pereira, Colombia, starting Dec.
20. Flights between Miami and the Argentine city of Cordoba begin April 2,
2019, with American using Boeing 767
300 widebody jets for that route. From Los Angeles, American will use its Boeing 787-9 “Dreamliners” to launch new non-stop service to Buenos Aires. The thrice-weekly schedule begins Dec. 19.