ICELAND:Icelandair Stops Flights To Kansas City And San Francisco

Icelandair will end service to Kansas City and San Francisco this fall as it aims to shore up its business.

Seasonal Kansas City (MCI) flights ended on Sept. 15 and will not resume next summer, while year-round San Francisco (SFO) flights end on Jan. 5, according to Diio by Cirium schedule data. Icelandair served both cities from Reykjavik (KEF).

Icelandair is ending the routes for commercial reasons, it said in an announcement Monday. The airline continues to review its network to both improve profitability and minimize the impact of the Boeing 737 MAX grounding, it added.

The carrier suspended flights to Tampa (TPA) in June as a result of the grounding.

Icelandair’s move comes just half-a-year after its Reykjavik-based low-cost competition WOW Air shut down. At its peak, WOW served 15 destinations in the U.S., including San Francisco, Diio by Cirium schedule data shows.

Kansas City director of aviation Pat Klein said in a statement that the city was disappointed in Icelandair’s decision to end service. The airline was the first to ever provide a nonstop to Europe from the airport.

Aviation staff will continue to meet with airlines with the intent to grow Kansas City’s international access.

Icelandair continues to serve 12 cities in the U.S., including Denver (DEN), New York John F. Kennedy (JFK) and Washington Dulles (IAD), from Reykjavik, according to Diio schedules.

Tourism Observer

USA: Southwest Airlines Makes Expansion Strategies

Southwest Airlines announced expansion in their operations, which will be effective from this week.

These flights were inaugurated from April 8 and saw 11 nonstop routes take off.

The services will take customers to the following destinations and origins:

- San Jose-Boise

- San Jose-Houston

- San Jose-Spokane

- San Jose-St. Louis

- San Jose-New Orleans

- San Francisco-Austin

- Sacramento-Austin

- Sacramento-St. Louis

- Oakland-Newark

- San Diego-Newark

On top of this, the carrier began new intra-Florida services between Fort Lauderdale and Jacksonville, which will operate three times per day.

Southwest also celebrated brand new daily non-stop flights between Raleigh and Kansas City as well as a Sunday-only service between Austin and Indianapolis respectively.

Futhermore, a new Saturday service will be implemented on April 14 between Oakland and Orlando, marking the first time that Southwest Airlines has ever connected the Bay Area and Orlando via a non-stop service.

This service will then be upgraded to daily services from July 2018.

The carrier will also be adding a seasonal service between Kansas City and Pensacola as well as between Orlando and Oklahoma City.

Moreover, Southwest will begin non-stop services between Pheonix and New York’s La Guardia, which will continue until June 2018.

Internationally, the carrier is making some further gains out of Cancun where weekly seasonal flights will operate on Saturdays between Colombus and New Orleans to Cancun.

Southwest currently carries over 120 million passengers per year and have a workforce of 56,000 employees that will help sustain this growth going into the future.

These expansions will come following the number of 737 MAX’s delivered to Southwest Airlines as well as the many more that are on the way.

These aircraft will replace older generation aircraft as well as add to the total fleet, thus allowing Southwest to expand in such a significant manner.



Tourism Observer

UNITED KINGDOM: Giant Rabbit Found Dead On London To Chicago Flight, United Airlines Sued

A group of Iowa businessmen filed a lawsuit Wednesday against United Airlines over the death of Simon, a giant rabbit whose lifeless body was discovered in a kennel after a flight from London to Chicago.

The lawsuit comes as United struggles to repair its image after a string of events, including the videotaped forced removal of a 69-year-old doctor from a plane at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and the banning of two young girls from a flight because they were wearing leggings.

The businessmen filed the lawsuit more than three months after airline workers found the continental rabbit dead on April 20.

Simon had been placed in a United kennel at O'Hare while awaiting a connecting flight to Kansas City, where his new owners planned to pick him up.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages to cover the costs of the rabbit as well as punitive damages.

Attorney Guy Cook represents the three Des Moines-area businessmen who bought Simon with the intention of showing him at the Iowa State Fair and then displaying him and selling related merchandise to raise money for the annual event.

The lawsuit said United was negligent in the care and transportation of Simon and that the airline improperly cremated the rabbit.

United spokesman Charles Hobart released a statement saying, “We were saddened by Simon's death in April. We have received this complaint and are currently reviewing it.”

Cook said the businessmen Mark Oman, Steve Bruere, and Duke Reichardt never intended to profit from the rabbit and that they plan to donate any money from the lawsuit to a state fair foundation that funds upkeep at the fairgrounds in Des Moines.

They're frustrated with how United has handled this from the start, Cook said. None of them stand to benefit financially from the resolution.

The lawsuit alleges United has a poor record of transporting animals, stating the airline accounted for one-third of all animal deaths via U.S. air travel in the last five years.

The suit doesn't explain how the rabbit died but puts forth several possibilities, including that it was exposed to low temperatures in the cargo compartment or that dry ice might have been left in the same compartment as the animal.

When Cook threatened legal action in May, Hobart said United had reached a satisfactory resolution with the rabbit's breeder, Annette Edwards, in Worcestershire in the United Kingdom.

However, the lawsuit contends the rabbit had been sold to the Iowa group, which also had arranged and paid for the animal's transport to the United States.

Before flying to the U.S., the lawsuit states that a veterinarian examined Simon and found him to be in good physical condition and fit to travel.

The lawsuit seeks a jury trial in Des Moines.



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USA: United Airlines Reduces Non-Stop Flights From Cleveland Hopkins International Airport

United Airlines, the world’s largest airline when measured by number of destinations served, is eliminating two more non-stop destinations from Cleveland Hopkins, Las Vegas and St. Louis, starting in early May.

The reductions will leave United airlines with just 15 non-stop destinations from Cleveland, down from 58 just two years ago, when the airline still operated a hub at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE).

United Airlines spokesman Jonathan Guerin said:

“We continually review supply and demand for service in all of our markets. We made the difficult decision to end service between Cleveland and our St. Louis and Las Vegas routes because they didn’t meet our expectations and are no longer sustainable.”

The last day for both routes will be May 4. Cleveland travelers, however, have, or will soon have, alternatives to both destinations. Frontier, Spirit and Southwest airlines all fly non-stop between Cleveland and Las Vegas.

United airlines is currently the only carrier flying from Cleveland to St. Louis, offering twice daily flights on 50-seat Embraer jets.

Southwest Airlines, however, announced in December a new daily flight to St. Louis, which begins June 5.

These most recent cuts leave United Airlines with a fraction of the service it had two years ago, when Cleveland was still one of the airline’s eight hubs. Since the airline’s downsizing announcement in February 2014, United Airlines has cut more than 40 nonstop destinations from Cleveland, including Baltimore, Atlanta, Kansas City, New Orleans, Phoenix and many others.

United Airlines spokesman Jonathan Guerin said Cleveland was not the only United Airlines market to experience cuts in the airline’s latest round of schedule adjustments.