A historic deal has been reached this week after three days of talks in Washington that opens the way for US airlines to negotiate with Cuba's government to operate up to 20 routes a day to Havana and ten too each of Cuba's other nine major airports, according to State Department officials. These will be in addition to the current limited charter programmes that have been serving the countries while hefty sanctions have been in place.
The airline currently offers five daily flights from the much coveted airport due to its proximity to central Dallas to its Atlanta hub at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, but has run into a bitter battle with the facility’s largest tenant, low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines, over gate access.
Subject to final regulatory approval, Alaska Airlines will offer a four times weekly schedule between Orange County and San José del Cabo, in the Baja California Sur state, starting from October 8, 2015 and three times weekly between Orange County and Licenciado Gustavo Díaz Ordaz International Airport in Puerto Vallarta from October 9, 2015. Both routes will be flown using Next-Generation Boeing 737-800 equipment.
Southwest Airlines is to begin flights from Houston Hobby to both Mexico City and San Jose Cabo after receiving approval from the US Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Mexican civil aviation authority (DGAC).
The new flights will be made possible through a long-term sub-lease agreement that will transfer usage of two gates in the newly rebuilt 20-gate facility from United Airlines to Southwest Airlines. The transaction was reviewed and cleared without conditions by the US Department of Justice Antitrust Division, while the City of Dallas, the owner and operator of Love Field, also has approved the sub-lease.
Ahead of this year's Routes Americas forum, Routesonline is providing a snapshot on the leading airlines and airports and most used aircraft types across the region. Here we look closely at the airlines serving the Caribbean and highlight the region's top performers.
The Icelandic carrier plans to extend its Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport flight schedule, operating services between BWI and Reykjavik a month earlier than planned.
According to data from OAG Schedules Analyser, Southwest Airlines has more than doubled its departure capacity from Colorado's largest air gateway between 2008 and 2014 to hold a 27.1 per cent share of available departure seats last year.
The growth into Belize with regular flights to Philip S W Goldson International Airport in Belize City, will add a second destination in Central America, a seventh country, and the 96th city to the Southwest route map.
We took a look at the top 20 airlines in the world by operating carrier, analysing the network capacity in December 2013 against the same month this year.
The proposed new route is due to launch on March 7, 2015 and Southwest Airlines has initially opened reservations for the first month of operations through to April 6, 2015. According to Southwest it anticipates strong point-to-point flows on the first-ever non-stop service on this routing but will also facilitate connections with 17 additional cities in the US via its Baltimore/Washington base.
Southwest Airlines’ vice president for network planning and performance, Andrew Watterson, reveals to our sister magazine, Routes News, what travellers can look forward to in the coming months.
United States domestic air travellers could face a summer of higher fares thanks to a reduction in airline capacity exacerbated by the US government’s American Airlines - US Airways merger settlement, claims aviation intelligence provider, OAG.
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.
