Pittsburgh putting air struggles in past
British Airways to begin nonstop flights to London
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:
❚ Steel City to Londontown, no stops. British Airways is adding Pittsburgh to its route map, news that continues a string of air-service victories for the once-struggling Pittsburgh International Airport.
British Airways’ Pittsburgh service begins April 2, when the carrier will launch a schedule of four weekly flights to its main hub at London Heathrow. The airline will operate the year-round service on its Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners.
The move brings British Airways back to a city it last served in 1999 and gives Pittsburgh its first nonstop service to London since 2004.
The new British Airways route continues a run of good news for the airport, which had seen flight and passenger numbers decline in the decade since US Airways (now part of American) dropped the city as a hub in 2004.
The number of nonstop destinations airlines fly from the airport has nearly doubled since 2015. Pittsburgh has added two new routes to Europe: WOW Air to Reykjavik, Iceland, and Condor Airlines to Frankfurt, Germany.
❚ United dropping ultralong L.A. route. United Airlines will drop its Los Angeles-Singapore service on Oct. 26, ending a route that had been the longest ever flown by a U.S. carrier.
United will shift that flight north to its hub in San Francisco. The carrier already flies nonstop between San Fran- cisco and Singapore, but it will move to twice-daily service there the day after its L.A.-Singapore route ends.
United said the change was to better serve customers by giving them more flexibility. United will now offer morning and evening departures on both sides of its Singapore-San Francisco service.
United, however, will maintain its title for having the longest flight of any U.S. airline. United’s existing flight between Houston Bush Intercontinental and Sydney – currently the secondlongest route for a U.S. carrier – will move to the top spot once United’s LAXSingapore route ends.
❚ Singapore fills United’s void in L.A. Just two weeks after United said it would end its L.A.-Singapore flights, Singapore Airlines confirmed its plans to add its own service between the cit- ies. The service will begin Nov. 2, when it deploys its new Airbus A350-900ULR (ultralong-range) jet on the route. Service begins with three flights a week but will move to daily service Nov. 9.
Singapore’s A350-900ULRs will not have any standard economy seats. The airline is configuring its new ULR versions of the A350 with 67 lie-flat business-class seats and 94 recliner seats in premium economy.
If Singapore’s A350-900ULRs sound familiar, there’s good reason. Singapore announced to great fanfare in May that it would use the planes to reinstate nonstop service between Singapore and Newark Liberty in New Jersey. Once that route resumes in October, it will be the world’s longest airline flight by distance (about 9,535 miles). Flight time is scheduled for 18 hours, 45 minutes on the Singapore-bound leg.
❚ European budget airline lands at Dulles. Primera Air, one of the newest European budget airlines to tackle the U.S. market, will land at Washington Dulles International Airport next month. The carrier will fly from Washington to London’s Stansted Airport, about 35 miles north of the city’s financial district. Starting Aug. 22, Primera will fly five flights a week on Airbus
A321neo narrowbody jets configured with 16 premium economy seats and 182 in standard coach.
Dulles becomes the third U.S. airport for Primera, which already flies from Boston and Newark Liberty.
❚ Frontier looks south. Frontier Airlines is expanding its footprint, announcing three new destinations in the region and an expansion at North Carolina’s Raleigh/Durham airport.
The new cities joining Frontier’s network are Huntsville, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; and Lafayette, Louisiana. From each of the new cities, the “ultra low-cost carrier” will offer seasonal service to Denver and Orlando. The routes launch between Oct. 5 and Oct. 24.
Frontier also turned to North Carolina for growth, announcing six additional routes from Raleigh/Durham International Airport (RDU).
The new flights – all seasonal – will give RDU nonstop connections on Frontier to Cancun, Mexico; Fort Myers, Florida; Montego Bay, Jamaica; Phoenix; Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic; and West Palm Beach, Florida.
All six routes will begin in November.
❚ JetBlue: New flights to Mexico City. JetBlue’s new routes to Mexico City from New York JFK and Boston are on sale. The routes – each set to launch Oct. 25 – will augment JetBlue’s existing service to Mexico City from both Fort Lauderdale and Orlando in Florida. On the new routes from Boston and New York, JetBlue will offer one daily roundtrip flight on Airbus A320 aircraft.