USA: Southwest, Delta, American, Korean And Alaska Drop And Open New Routes

Alaska Airlines will drop a Midwest route from San Francisco; Southwest hints at Hawaii and begins new service out of Los Angeles and Denver; American will fly a new transpacific route temporarily and adds a pair of domestic routes.

Korean plans to add a new U.S. gateway; and Frontier begins code-sharing to Mexico and announces another spate of new routes.

Last fall, Alaska Airlines started service between San Francisco and Indianapolis. And this fall, it will drop that route, effective September 30.

There has been lower than expected demand for these flights and we need to utilize this aircraft to add capacity on other routes, said a spokesperson of Alaska Airlines.

This change is another example of how we are looking across the network and making some tough decisions to ensure we are running as efficient of an operation as possible, so we can continue to offer our customers low fares. Alaska will continue to operate its Seattle-Indianapolis service.

The SFO-Indianapolis route is also served by United with it's cleverly numbered Flight 500, and Southwest has nonstop service between Oakland and Indianapolis.

Southwest made a few more hints this week about its new Hawaii service, revealing details such as its plans to serve meals on flights to and from the mainland.

Schedules are expected to be announced in October with flights starts a few weeks later, we predict November timeframe. Flights will have satellite based wi-fi and movies, too. No word on fares yet.

Southwest Airlines this week kicked off its newest transcontinental non-stop, with daily service between Los Angeles International and Tampa. The LAX-Tampa route is also served by Delta and Spirit Airlines. And at Denver, Southwest this week started new daily non-stops to Cincinnati.

For 10 days in January, American Airlines' usual Chicago O'Hare-Tokyo Narita non-stop will operate via an intermediate stop in Las Vegas.

American said that from January 4 to 14, the daily 787-8 LAS-NRT flight will be marketed by its joint venture partner Japan Airlines to carry passengers to and from the giant Consumer Electronics Show. JAL will continue to offer its own daily non-stops between Chicago and Tokyo during that period.

Meanwhile, American will add a couple of new domestic routes in the months ahead. On November 4, it will launch one daily roundtrip between Dallas/Ft. Worth and Cheyenne, Wyoming, operated by Skywest with a CRJ-200.

On December 22, it will begin one flight a week between its Charlotte hub and New Haven, flown by PSA Airlines with a CRJ-200.

Korean Air is coming to Boston next spring, with plans to begin Boston-Seoul Incheon service five days a week beginning April 12. Korean will use a 787-9 on the route, equipped with six first class suites, 18 lie-flat seats in business class and 245 seats in the main cabin.

Korean will operate the route as part of its joint venture partnership with Delta, which recently announced plans to launch its own new service to Seoul from Minneapolis-St. Paul beginning in 2019.

Later this month, Frontier Airlines and Mexican low-cost carrier Volaris will begin a massive program of code-sharing that will put Frontier's code onto 51 routes operated by Volaris and will see the Mexican carrier's code go onto 120 routes operated by Frontier.

The new code-sharing will apply to Volaris flights from San Francisco to Mexico City and Guadalajara, and San Jose to Guadalajara, Morelia and Zacatecas, among many others.

Meanwhile, Frontier has announced another spate of new domestic routes, mostly starting in mid-November. From Phoenix, Frontier will begin new service to Norfolk, Ft. Myers, Grand Rapids and Madison. From Tucson, it will add service to Denver.

At Tampa, Frontier will start flying to Syracuse, Grand Rapids, Portland (Maine), Norfolk, and Greenville, S.C. And at Ft. Myers, it will kick off seasonal service to Albany, Las Vegas, Phoenix., Portland (Maine), Salt Lake City and Syracuse.

Most of the new routes will offer two or three flights a week.


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