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May 2003 Frequent Flyer Program News
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Travel News
Airline NewsHEADLINE NEWS World Health Organization (WHO), in an unprecedented step on April 4 2003, urged travelers to avoid visiting Hong Kong and Guangdong Province in China owing to the presence of SARS. Airlines already have seen a dramatic falloff in traffic to Asia owing to SARS fears and the WHO announcement is likely to have a further damaging impact.
New international arriving passenger manifest information being sought from airlines by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service under a recent notice of proposed rulemaking is duplicative, of questionable value, and illegal in many countries, the International Air Transport Assn. charged. The proposal would create lengthy delays for both US and non-US citizens trying to board international flights to or from the US.
Boeing said Air France and American Airlines will test its new data-monitoring and prognostic service, Airplane Health Management, "to ensure its availability to airlines in the first quarter of 2004."
Air Botnia, an SAS Group subsidiary in Finland that operates 10 aircraft, launched twice-daily weekday services with RJ85s between Duesseldorf and Helsinki.
Passengers dined on caviar and foie gras Friday may 30 2003 as the Concorde, the world's fastest and most luxurious passenger jet, flew from Paris to New York for the last time. The Sierra Delta -- Concordes have names, not numbers -- took off from Charles de Gaulle airport at 10:38 a.m. As the wheels left the tarmac, it was already doing 236 mph. Seconds later, it was a point on the horizon. It landed at New York's JKF airport about 3 hours later -- a standard performance for the world's only supersonic passenger jet. "It's very emotional. Concorde is a story of joy, of emotion, of technical prowess," said Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, an Air France staffer, before the flight took off. Air France is retiring its Concorde fleet when the plane returns to Paris May 31, its last commercial flight. The only other airline to offer the Concorde is British Airways, which flies the aircraft between London and New York. It too plans to scrap its SST service at the end of October. Both carriers say they can no longer afford the plane's high maintenance costs. The Concorde's demise ends an era of champagne at twice the speed of sound. The luxury aircraft began regular service in 1976. The cruising speed is 1,350 mph. Only 20 were built, with 12 remaining in service, all operated by the two companies. One of Air France's five planes will be on exhibit at Charles de Gaulle airport and the other four are to go to various museums.
Air France will launch thrice-daily service from London Gatwick to Bordeaux May 19. It will be operated by AF subsidiary Brit Air using a 50-seat CRJ.
Air New Zealand canceled more of its Auckland-Hong Kong services because of a continued low level of bookings on the route. ANZ said it will cancel its Wednesday services from May 7 to July 2 and Thursday services from May 8 to June 5, a total of 14 flights.
AirTran Airways installed new ByePass self-service check-in kiosks at Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport. The installations are part of a partnership between the airline and Kinetics.
Aloha Airlines will launch daily nonstop service between Reno and Honolulu July 1 2003.
America West Airlines launched a third daily nonstop flight to Cleveland and Pittsburgh from Phoenix, using A319s in a two-class configuration on both routes.
American Airlines said the week of May 19 2003 that it would cap coach fares at $299 and business class fares at $599 on a series of routes where it faces low-fare competition.
American is also eliminating extra legroom in coach on its planes, which it had promoted in an effort to win business customers, and instead will put back seats it had removed. The carrier will eliminate its More Room Throughout Coach program on its 34 A300-600Rs and 140 757s and slash walkup fares on certain transcontinental routes.
American Airlines said it eliminated the need for paper tickets for domestic travel after implementing e-ticketing agreements with 10 domestic carriers. In addition, AA said that effective immediately, it no longer will issue paper tickets for e-ticket eligible domestic US itineraries through its reservations centers, airport ticket counters, Travel Centers and website.
Air Southwest starts flying out of Gatwick perhaps by the end of the summer. Air Southwest will start services from London's second airport to Plymouth and Newquay, taking over services dropped by BA CitiExpress to make the flag carrier's domestic services profitable.
ATA said its passengers now can check in via its website and print their boarding passes and receipts online. ATA Airlines will launch four flights each business day between Pittsburgh and Chicago Midway June 1 2003.
Bmi will re-launch its direct transatlantic route from Manchester to Washington June 1 2003.
Bmibaby will increase the frequency of its Belfast International-East Midlands service on weekdays from two to three July 14 2003. The increase is in response to overwhelming demand, the airline said.
British Airways will stop its services from London Gatwick to Newquay and Plymouth as well as on the Bristol-Newcastle route at the end of the summer season. Air Wales said it is interested in the Gatwick routes provided it can obtain the eight daily BA slots.
Creditors returned two planes seized from BWIA because of overdue lease payments, and agreed Thursday May 29 2003 to give the Trinidad-based airline a four-month reprieve on further debt payments, officials said. The leasing company seized two Boeing 737s at Miami International Airport last week, and said it would take six more if the company unless the company met its debt. International Lease Finance owns eight of BWIA's nine planes.
Delta Air Lines has announced on May 30 2003 new low discount fares for travel from the United States to many desirable destinations in Latin America, including Costa Rica, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and Lima. Tickets must be purchased by June 12, and travel completed by Oct. 31 2003. Sale fares must be purchased on a roundtrip basis, do not require an advance purchase, have minimum and maximum stay requirements and are nonrefundable. Travel must originate in the United States, except for Mexican destinations, where fares are valid either way.
Delta Air Lines plans to launch a codeshare service on South African Airways flights from New York JFK to Dakar effective June 1 2003, and will begin daily nonstop service between Atlanta and Honolulu Aug. 1 2003 using a 767.
Delta Connection will add three daily nonstop flights between Columbus, Ohio, and Boston June 11 2003. Chautauqua Airlines will operate the services.
Insiders at Emirates have confirmed that while the airline will be placing a massive aircraft order June 16 at the Paris Air Show, some of the figures quoted in the past week are not correct. It has been reported that the airline will order 23 A380s, 10 A340-600HGWs and 26 777-300ERs. While the 10 A340-600HGW and 26 777 orders are expected, analysts questioned whether the 777s all will be dash 300ERs. Emirates operates both the dash 200 and dash 300 versions of the 777 and has been looking at both the dash 300ER and dash 200LR offerings.
Emirates is increasing services between its Dubai hub and Perth from four times weekly to daily as of May 15, aligning Perth with existing daily services from Dubai to both Sydney and Melbourne. Daily flights between Dubai and Brisbane will be launched Oct. 26 2003. Also, Emirates will increase its flights between Dubai and Perth from four times weekly to daily beginning May 15 2003.
Finnair said it will operate one weekly flight instead of three on the Helsinki-Beijing route because of a drop in demand. Weekly frequencies were cut back less than a month ago from five to three.
Frontier Airlines will begin three daily nonstop services between Milwaukee and Denver Aug. 31 2003.
Germanwings, the no-frills subsidiary of Lufthansa Regional airline partner Eurowings, inaugurated daily service the week of May 19 2003 between its Cologne-Bonn hub and Budapest.
Gulf Air, in the midst of a three-year restructuring strategy, said May 7 2003 it is branding as Gulf Traveller what it calls a full service, all-economy regional subsidiary, not to be confused with so-called budget or no-frills carriers. Gulf Traveller will operate out of Gulf Air's base in Abu Dhabi from June 1 using six single-class 767-300ERs. It will serve an unspecified number of routes presently a part of Gulf Air's regular network where customer demand exceeds existing capacity. They include points in Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Zanzibar. Plans include extending the network to secondary European destinations. Gulf Traveller will have more cabin crew dedicated to passenger needs than on most regular economy class flights.
Gulf Air is also launching a Business Plus package of benefits tailored for the frequent business traveler. It will include a range of "fast-track" services to speed passengers through arrival and departure formalities on the airline's 15 nonstop flights between the United Arab Emirates and London, Frankfurt and Paris. Limousine transfers are offered between Abu Dhabi and any destination in the UAE.
Iberia and Swiss International Air Lines on May 15 2003 are widening a codeshare accord dating to Nov. 2002 to include flights from Spain to Budapest and Nuremberg via Zurich. The Spanish carrier also will offer additional flights to Vienna via Zurich by adding its code to Swiss flights from Switzerland. Under the expanded accord, Swiss will offer flights from Switzerland to Oporto, Valencia, Seville and Bilbao by adding its code to Iberia flights to those cities from Madrid and Barcelona.
Iberia Regional Air Nostrum will launch two daily services between Barcelona and Hamburg and a daily direct flight to Paris from Alicante and Santiago de Compostela June 1 2003. On June 12 the Iberia franchise partner will add five-times-weekly flights to its four-daily Brussels-Madrid services. Weekly flights between Bilbao and Alicante will become daily and the number of daily services between Malaga and Bilbao is being doubled to two, the company said. There also will be six direct weekly return flights between Santiago de Compostela and Valencia. All flights will be operated with CRJ200s.
Iraqi Airways, Iraq's national carrier, hard-hit by two wars and 13 years of U.N. sanctions, is preparing to resume services after a three-month hiatus caused by the latest conflict, its management said Thursday May 29 2003. The state-owned airline has been grounded since the start of the U.S.-led coalition offensive against Iraq in March 2003. In the 1970s, the state-owned airline was considered one of the fastest-growing in the Middle East. Its aircraft - with their distinctive green-and-white paint scheme - included Boeing 707s, 727s, 747s and Russian-built Il-76 cargo jets that served its expanding route network. That expansion ended with the start of the Iraq-Iran war in 1980 as funds for the purchase of new types dried up. Just before the 1991 Gulf War, its fleet of 15 Boeing airliners was flown out to Jordan, Iran and Tunisia to escape bombing. Flights linked Baghdad with Mosul and Basra, but these were again suspended in March, just as the latest conflict started. Pilots say the airline has a total of 23 passenger and cargo jets. Eight remain at Baghdad airport, two were were badly damaged in the fighting and have been written off, and 15 are currently parked abroad.
Japan Airlines made further cuts to its planned schedule yesterday in light of reduced forward bookings. Frequency has been reduced on 16 routes, service has been suspended on 11 others and adjustments have been made to seven codeshare flights. In total, the reductions amount to the suspension of more than 170 weekly flights between June 1 and Oct. 31 2003 compared to previous plans.
KLM will increase its business-class cabin configuration from five-abreast to six-abreast as it replaces its European Business Class product with KLM Europe Select. Seat pitch will remain unchanged at 33 in. At the same time, the carrier will reduce its business-class fares, depending on local market conditions, as part of a broader fare restructuring. For the Dutch market this implies a 5% to 13% cut on average.
Korean Air resumed its suspended flights on the Incheon-Dubai-Cairo route. It will operate two weekly flights but only between Incheon and Dubai, with Cairo to be added later. Korean also resumed flights to Rome and is increasing service to Zurich and Yanji.
Lufthansa contracted with Connexion by Boeing to become the first airline to commit to equipping its entire long-haul fleet with high-speed broadband access to the Internet for passengers. The announcement came in the aftermath of the historic Connexion premiere in commercial flight last Jan. 15 onboard an LH 747-400 en route from Frankfurt to Washington and three months of free-of-charge inflight user tests that ended in April 2003.
MenaJet, a startup that touts itself as "the Middle East's first no-frills airline," said it plans to launch operations in Dec. over an undisclosed route network from Sharjah, smallest of the sheikhdoms in the United Arab Emirates. Coincidentally, Gulf Air announced earlier in May that its "full service" all-economy Regional subsidiary Gulf Traveller, "not to be confused with so-called budget or no frills carriers", will launch service June 1 2003 from Abu Dhabi with six 767-300ERs.
Northwest Airlines will add a second daily nonstop between June 7 and Sept. 1 on the Minneapolis/St. Paul-Fairbanks route using a 757. In addition, the airline will operate one daily nonstop between Detroit and Anchorage from May 15 to Sept. 1 2003 using a 757. Also, it will increase its two daily frequencies between MSP and Anchorage to five on a seasonal basis.
On Monday May 19, 2003, PrivatAir launched its new business class only shuttle service between Munich and New York's Newark airport behalf of Lufthansa. The route is operated on an ACMI basis 6 days per week (every day except Saturday) with PrivatAir's 48 seat Boeing Business Jet. The long haul, all business class concept has proved to be eminently successful since June of last year, when PrivatAir and Lufthansa launched the world's first transatlantic business class only scheduled service between Duesseldorf and Newark. There were 44 passengers on board flight LH 412, which took off from Munich at 11:41 and is scheduled to land in Newark at 14:10 (local times). The return flight (LH 413) leaves Newark at 18:30, arriving in Munich at 08:15 the following morning.
Qatar Airways will launch four-times-weekly A300-600R services June 16 2003 between Doha and Rome, the carrier's 41st network destination, in an extension of its services to Milan. Two of the Rome flights will be via Milan and two will be nonstop continuing to Milan.
Ryanair launched its 10th route from Brussels-Charleroi to Barcelona-Girona.
Singapore Airlines is permitting a one-time reservation change without penalty for passengers if they make the change by May 31 and complete the travel by November 30. This policy was already in place and instituted related to the Middle East situation and a possibility of a Red security level. There are no fee waivers at this time for trip cancellations in which the passenger seeks a refund. A policy related specifically to the SARS epidemic is to be announced soon. The spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has prompted the airline to slash 13.6 percent of its capacity. Latest cuts include suspension of all service from Kaohsiung, Taiwan from April 15, and from Hiroshima from April 9. SQ is also delaying launch of thrice weekly Singapore-Bangalore service until June 12 and is pulling two more services on the LAX-Singapore run due to demand drops stemming from the war and SARS cancellations. Effective April 7 through May 31, SQ's Tuesday and Thursday flights via Narita, Japan, will be dropped. Last month, SQ had already canceled two other services: the LAX-SIN services on Monday and Wednesday via Taipei.
SN Brussels Airlines said it reached an agreement with PGA Portugalia on the Brussels-Porto route, allowing it to add its code on the daily flight operated by Portugalia with ERJs in two-class configuration.
SN Brussels Airlines confirmed that it will connect Brussels with Tel Aviv starting June 4 using an A319 in two-class configuration. In the first phase, three weekly flights will be operated. A fourth weekly connection will be added by the end of June 2003.
Snowflake, the SAS low-fare subsidiary, will operate three new routes beginning Oct. 26 2003: Stockholm-Beirut on Mondays, Stockholm-Lyon on Wednesdays and Saturdays and Stockholm-Belgrade on Wednesdays and Fridays. In addition, a route will be established between Copenhagen and Istanbul with flights on Mondays and Fridays. SAS also said it would like to establish snowflake in Norway and is reviewing ways in which this can be done.
Southwest Airlines will launch nonstop service Sept. 10 between Las Vegas and Manchester (N.H.), Hartford and Detroit (Saturday only). Beginning Oct. 5 it will start nonstop service between Las Vegas and Raleigh-Durham. Also it is adding 15 daily nonstop flights to various cities in Aug. and Sept. 2003.
Swiss International Airlines will suspend its scheduled services to Beijing between May 29 and Aug. 15 2003 owing to the SARS outbreak. The carrier said the decision was based on economic reasons. Load factors on the flights have been below 20% for the last two weeks and advance bookings "offer little prospect of recovery in the short-term future."
Swiss International Air Lines announced May 2 2003 that it intends to spin off its Regional airline operations into a standalone subsidiary with a separate board of directors and executive management team. The new airline, to be called Swiss Express, is expected to commence operations in the fall and is being created in response to new market conditions to offer low-cost air connections, especially within Europe. Swiss Express will be a lean organization whose costs are 20% below those of the parent airline. The fleet will consist of Saab 2000s, Avro RJ85/100s, ERJ-145s and eventually the new Embraer 170 and 195 models that will begin to arrive next year.
Swiss International Air Lines was saddled with a government minder on May 1 2003 in the wake of rising doubts about its long-term survival in its present form. Early last year, Swiss operated 132 aircraft to 117 destinations in 60 countries. Today it is flying 109 aircraft to 99 cities in 56 countries, including 41 intercontinental points. Critics contend that even this shrunken network cannot be commercially viable with the airline's relatively small home market, which Dose puts at 11 million counting 7.3 million Swiss and people in southern Germany, Austria and northern Italy.
TAP Air Portugal and SN Brussels Airlines will start codesharing June 3 2003 on the Lisbon-Brussels route. The four daily flights are operated by TAP with A320-family aircraft.
Thomas Cook "powered by Condor" launched a weekly service between Halifax and Frankfurt the week of May 19 2003 using a 757-200 in a one-class configuration. The seasonal service will end Oct. 16 2003.
United Airlines is backing off from its strategy to make a separate low-fare carrier the linchpin of its plan to emerge from bankruptcy, saying now that the operation will be only one aspect of its eventual revamping proposal. Executives repeatedly stressed the need for the operation during the months immediately after United's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing last December. But since then, competitors have stepped in with their own efforts to combat Southwest, JetBlue and other low-fare carriers. United could not waste time because its competitors were taking their own steps. Last month, Delta began flights by Song, its low-fare operation focusing primarily on the East Coast, with fares from $79 to $299 one-way. American Airlines said the week of May 19 2003 that it would cap coach fares at $299 and business class fares at $599 on a series of routes where it faces low-fare competition.
United Airlines will introduce a new online check-in capability, deploy additional self-service units, increase seat pitch in its business class and complete the installation of Economy Plus on its 777 fleet in an effort to enhance customers' airport and in-flight experience.
US Airways, following a similar move by Delta Air Lines, will resume some of its Shuttle flights between Boston Logan, New York LaGuardia and Reagan Washington National airports effective June 2 2003. The restored Shuttle weekday schedule will offer 15 flights between New York and Reagan National, 15 between New York and Boston and 14 between Reagan National and Boston.
US Airways will resume service between Pittsburgh and London Gatwick and Frankfurt June 1 2003, operating one daily nonstop flight on each route.
US Airways said on May 29 2003 it plans to start selling breakfast, lunch and dinner to its economy class passengers on certain domestic flights beginning next month. The carrier plans to replace complimentary snacks on 360 routes with an in-flight catering service offering $7 breakfast packs or $10 lunch and dinner meals. The move follows a two-month trial in select markets and reflects a growing trend among cash-strapped airlines. Bankrupt United Airlines ran a similar pilot project in April. The US Airways service is expected to roll out to additional routes June 18 and go systemwide on July 1, the carrier said in a statement. "Our two-month test with LSG Sky Chefs has proven this product to be popular both with our customers and with our flight crews that have participated," said Sherry Hendry, US Airways vice president of in-flight services.
US Airways launched daily nonstop service between Boston and Bermuda using an A319 in a two-class configuration. US Airways also initiated daily service between Dublin and Philadelphia May 4 2003. It is operating a 767 in two-class configuration on the route.
Virgin Atlantic Chairman Richard Branson continues to pursue the possibility to taking over Concorde operations after British Airways retires its fleet this year. Branson said his airline submitted proposals to Airbus with suggestions on how to keep Concorde in the air.
WestJet will withdraw service from Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury effective Sept. 9 and 10 2003 respectively.
World Airways launched nonstop flights this week between Atlanta and Lagos under a contract with Ritetime Aviation. The contract calls for World to provide weekly nonstop services from both Atlanta and New York JFK to Lagos. The JFK service is expected to begin June 1. In addition, the airline will begin Houston-Lagos flights Aug. 5 2003. All will use MD-11s.
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Sources: Airlines, Airports, Air & Business Travel News, Airliners.net, Prnewswire.com and Travelocity.com
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