In the first change to the Philippine - Canada Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) since December 2008, the two sides have agreed to increase the frequency entitlement for each side from seven flights a week to 14. Fifth freedom rights were also increased from four to five per week.
This latest announcement shows how the partnership between Virgin Atlantic and Delta Air Lines, which launched on January 1, 2014, is increasing the network of each carrier. Virgin Atlantic will now have access to Delta's Atlanta hub, the busiest airport in the world, for the first time, providing greater access for the carrier to offer connections through to points throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.
AirTran Airways, initially formed as ValuJet in 1993, will operate its last scheduled flight on December 28, 2014 with AirTran Flight 001 (marketed as Southwest ‘WN5001’) operating between Atlanta and Tampa Bay that evening, the same flight number and routing of ValuJet's inaugural flight on October 26, 1993.
The initial tentative schedule shows the aircraft will operate twice daily on the Toronto - Halifax route from May 23, 2014 through to May 25, 2014 and then on various dates through to the end of June 2014. Alongside this domestic link, Air Canada also plans to use the aircraft on its flights from Toronto to Zurich (from May 25, 2014 to July 14, 2014) and London (from July 2, 2014 to July 13, 2014).
Already serving both Washington Reagan National and Baltimore Washington International airports, the carrier will launch 68 weekly flights to 14 destinations from Dulles International Airport from August this year.
United will inaugurate the new route on October 26, 2014, subject to final government approval. Haneda Airport will be the tenth trans-Pacific destination that United serves nonstop from San Francisco, and the third new Asia-Pacific airport for the carrier this year.
There are currently no direct services between Ecuador and Fort Lauderdale, although American Airlines and LanEcuador offer flights to Miami from Quito. According to MIDT data, an estimated 422,000 bi-directional O&D passengers travelled between Ecuador and Florida in 2013.
The airline currently utilises a 136-seat Boeing 737-700 on its daily Toronto - Québec City route but will replace this with a 78-seat Dash 8-Q400NextGen when Encore takes over the operation of the route from March 15, 2015.
Qantas launched flights between Sydney and Dallas in May 2011 and currently utilises a Boeing 747-400ER on the route. The additional range of the A380 over the 747 it replaces will see the return service operate direct to Sydney rather than via Brisbane.
The introduction of flights to Rio de Janeiro has been on Air Canada’s radar for a while, but with the loss of Brazil’s largest carrier TAM Airlines as an alliance partner from April this year, it has become a higher priority for the Star Alliance member.
The new flight will offer travellers in the Denver area with direct access to the Panamanian capital as well as numerous connections to several additional cities in Central and South America through United's strategic partnership with Copa Airlines.
The new routes from across the American Airlines and US Airways hubs, includes service to five destinations in the Midwest, including Bismarck, North Dakota, a new destination for the combined carrier.
Although JetBlue sees a sizeable point-to-point demand is also expects Utah residents to connect via the Florida airport to other destinations across its network such as the Bahamas, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Mexico and Puerto Rico.
The Abu Dhabi-based airline’s first Airbus A380 will operate commercially to London Heathrow from December 2014, while its first Boeing 787-9s will debut on routes to Düsseldorf from December this year and then to Washington DC and Mumbai from January 2015.
UK leisure carrier Thomas Cook Airlines is to launch new long-haul links to the United States from London Stansted, Manchester and Glasgow as part of its expanded summer 2015 programme. The long-haul growth will be supported by a major investment in upgrading its Airbus A330 fleet to offer a much higher level of comfort to Transatlantic passengers.
The confirmation of the return of the route will now place the carrier in direct competition with its local rival Air Europa which inaugurated its own operations between Madrid and Montevideo in June 2013 just three months after Iberia ended its flights.
Government actions have meant that within the past year, eleven of the 24 airlines operating in Venezuela have reduced operations between 15 per cent and 78 per cent while one has stopped flying to the country altogether.
Under its revised Dallas schedule, Virgin America will move its existing links to Dallas/Fort Worth International from Los Angeles and San Francisco to the downtown airport from October 13, 2014 and will add multiple daily links with Chicago, New York, Washington DC.
In its formal application for an Exemption and Foreign Air Carrier Permit, Dreamjet confirms it plans to offer an all-Business Class service between Paris and Newark from the second half of June 2014 but has plans to expand its transatlantic network and “possibly add flights” from other European cities in the future.
US ultra low-fare carrier, Spirit Airlines, has announced it will expand its domestic to offering into Kansas City with the launch of five new routes this summer with daily flights to Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston and Las Vegas from August 2014.
