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.


Tourism Observer

USA: Airport Workers Stealing From Luggage

Inside a plane at Miami International Airport, baggage handlers are going on a shopping spree with passengers' bags.

What they don't know is that they are being recorded on a hidden camera. The Miami-Dade Police Department set up the camera as part of an ongoing police investigation into luggage thefts by the very airport workers who are supposed to get bags safely onto planes.

"It's a problem we all face," said police Lt. Pete Estis. "We will continue to be proactive until we can see that the claims of pilfering through luggage will actually decrease."

Miami Aviation Director Emilio T. González said the insider theft cases "are indeed the exception among the thousands of decent, hardworking employees at MIA, and they have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for their crimes."

And these insider thefts just don't happen in Miami. Passenger property loss claims filed with the TSA from 2010 to 2014 shows 30,621 claims of missing valuables, mostly packed in checked luggage. The rest occurred at security checkpoints. Total property loss claimed: $2.5 million.

John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York topped the list of airports with the most claims of thefts from luggage, followed by Los Angeles International, Orlando International and Miami International, according to the data.

The problem has been so serious at JFK that in 2013, El Al Airlines set up a hidden camera in a baggage hold. The camera showed baggage handlers stealing items on flights bound for Israel, including a $5,000 Seiko watch, iPhones, an iPad, cameras, gold rings and cash. Six of those arrested pleaded guilty to possession of stolen property or petty larceny and the seventh suspect's case was sealed, according to the Queens District Attorney's Office.

The high-profile case, though, didn't stop the thefts. Two more baggage handlers at JFK were arrested in 2014 after authorities said they stole two designer handbags from a suitcase, and then tried to sell them on eBay.

Then, in December, seven more JFK baggage handlers were charged with stealing valuables from checked luggage. The items were stolen from suitcases of passengers traveling to or from Hawaii, Japan, Johannesburg, London, Bangkok, Dubai, Milan and various U.S. cities.

In Miami, which aggressively goes after luggage thieves, police have arrested 31 baggage handlers and ramp workers since 2012, including six so far this year.

Police set up a hidden camera inside the belly of a plane last year and caught baggage handlers rifling through luggage and stealing various items.

Another hidden camera caught a baggage handler rummaging through bags in a secure luggage room inside the airport while a security guard looked the other way.

"Insider threat is very scary for us in law enforcement, and certainly someone taking somebody's cell phone, iPad, computer -- what's next?" Estis said.

This year Miami and Orlando are the only two major airports in the country that require employees to be screened through metal detectors. Miami even checks employees when they leave work to go into the main terminal. But that apparently hasn't stopped the luggage thieves.

"As far as being able to get the property off the airfield, that's a great question," Estis said. "We have theories."

In Los Angeles, police last year executed search warrants on 25 locations after getting complaints about thefts in two terminals. Among the valuables found were computers, watches, jewelry and cameras and designer bags. Sixteen airport workers were fired.

"We cut theft in those two terminals by 60% because of doing that aggressive investigative work," said Patrick Gannon, police chief of Los Angeles International Airport.

Luggage theft could definitely lead to more serious problems, he said.

"I absolutely think that if we don't pay attention to the small things that happen around here, that it could lead to much larger things. So there is, I believe, a connection between baggage theft and terrorism," Gannon said.

Even the TSA has had problem employees. Since 2002, the agency has fired 513 officers for theft. It employs about 50,000 officers today, and last year screened more than 443 million checked bags and nearly 1.7 billion carry-ons.

Luggage theft isn't confined to airport workers. Outsiders have been caught on surveillance cameras stealing luggage from carousels.

USA: Alaska Airlines Flys To Costa Rica

New route celebrations were held at both ends of Alaska Airlines’ new route from Los Angeles to San José in Costa Rica. This four times weekly service was started the day before another destination in the country, namely Liberia, was served and again operated from the Californian airport.

Alaska Airlines started its first flights into Costa Rica, with four times weekly services from Los Angeles (LAX) to both Liberia (LIR) and San José (SJO). The former 4,228-kilometre sector began on 1 November, while 4,379-kilometre services to the Costa Rican capital began the day before.

Delta Air Lines is the incumbent on both sectors, flying daily to San José and thrice-weekly to Liberia from the Californian airport. Both routes are operated by the airline’s 737-700 fleet.

“As the most popular Central American tourist destination for US travellers, Costa Rica is one of the best places in the Western Hemisphere for adventure tourism,” said John Kirby, Alaska Airlines’ VP of Capacity Planning.

“With the addition of Costa Rica, Alaska offers up to 80 peak season weekly departures from Southern California to Latin America, more than any other airline.” Vote for Los Angeles Airport’s route launch cake.

Top 40 US Busiest Airports

Top 40 US Airports
According to the 2011-2015 National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS), there are over 19,700 airports in the United States. 5,170 of these airports are open to the general public and 503 of them serve commercial flights.

A great deal of flights within the USA are domestic flights as North America is over 9,826,675 km² in total which would be a considerable amount of driving if you were to travel by car. This contributes to a large amount of air travel travellers through the popular and smaller airports.

These are the Top 40 busiest airports by passenger numbers in the US for 2012:

The above tables show the number of passengers for the top 40 busiest airports by passengers in the United States for last year (2012) and the year previous (2011) as well as the Year on Year change in the number of passengers between them.

Airport Information Index:

1. The busiest airport are ranked depending on the number of passengers flying to or from each airport.

2. Passenger may only be catching connecting flights from an airport to another destination.

3. Passenger Number data is related to the Airport Council International estimated full year figures for 2012.