The residents of Airlineville are showing more confidence than they’ve shown in a really long time. Vaccinations are becoming more widespread every day, and even though borders remain closed, that won’t stop travel where it’s allowed.
With that in mind, Airlinevillers are ramping up and they’re doing it earlier than usual. Cirium data shows the Widget, the Eagle, and the Taxi put out their optimistic June plans this week. The Globe, has done the same, but it’s feeling a little more… blue? Apparently the optimism has skipped over Willis Tower.
Meanwhile, the Sun is, as always, one step ahead. It’s been busy making Thanksgiving plans, of all things.
All this and more this week. Like sands through the hourglass, these are the skeds of air lines.
Alaska Looks Toward the Fall, Tackles Avelo
As announced this week, Alaska will begin flying from Burbank to Santa Rosa, a route just announced as Avelo’s inaugural. It will fly it once a day, and this fall it will bulk up Orange County and San Diego to Santa Rosa from 1x to 2x daily each.
Alaska has also made some fall tweaks too. Seattle – Walla Walla and Bend/Redmond will get an additional daily flight. Anchorage – Vegas will not operate during the fall shoulder season and Anchorage – San Francisco won’t operate after the summer. Before the broader August cut gets made, Alaska has already canceled several routes that month with a focus on Portland: Portland – Eugene, Fort Lauderdale, Omaha, Palm Springs, Tucson, Vancouver along with Paine Field – Los Angeles and Spokane all go away.
Allegiant Extends through Thanksgiving
Allegiant extended its schedule from mid – November to mid-December this week. That includes Thanksgiving, which will be up a few points from 2019.
American Takes Summer, Upgauges in DC
American has filed its look at June and July this week, and it’s feeling pretty good about things. American is down 19 percent in June and 15 percent in July vs 2 years ago. But that is dominated by international cancels. For example, this summer American now won’t fly to Edinburgh, Hong Kong, Manaus, and Shannon. Domestic travel is just a couple points down.
With the opening of the new regional concourse at Washington/National this week, American can now finally ditch its 50-seat jets. All of the ERJ-145 flights have been upgauged to CRJ-700s, putting First Class on every departure from the airport.
Lastly, American filed several new routes that it had announced, including Nashville – Raleigh/Durham. From DFW, it will fly to Bangor and Burlington starting in July. Meanwhile this winter, Miami will get weekly flights to Des Moines, Milwaukee, and Rochester along with daily flights to Grand Rapids and Omaha.
Delta Brings June Down Again
Delta has once again brought June down. It is now down 20 percent for the month and is closer to what it is likely to operate. Beyond June, Delta has extended cancels on several small hub/focus city routes through August. That includes Boston – Buffalo, Newark, Philly, San Francisco; LaGuardia – Charlottesville, Columbia, Grand Rapids, Knoxville, Memphis, Northwest Arkansas; Cincinnati – Chicago/O’Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, San Francisco; Raleigh/Durham – Newark, Washington/National among others. It has also bumped up longer haul frequencies in several Salt Lake markets, like New York and Boston.
Frontier Files Its New Routes
Frontier apparently had been holding on to a slew of new routes until after it was able to get through a successful IPO. Now it’s just putting out new routes day by day. Many of them were filed this week. You can read details here.
JetBlue Finally Files Its A220 and A321neo with New Mint
It’s been a long time coming. This weekend, JetBlue filed its first A220 schedules between Boston and both Fort Lauderdale and Tampa from April 26. It also added its first A321neo flights with the new Mint seats on the JFK – LAX route starting in June.
Southwest Gets Ducky
Southwest filed its Eugene schedules. Service will begin 1x daily to Vegas and 2x daily to Oakland from the end of August.
Spirit Puts Up an Early June Schedule
Spirit is trying to expand its window for having an actual schedule on sale. Spirit is showing down 2 percent for June over 2019, a slight improvement over May being down 3 percent.
United Does the Same
United has also put a June schedule up early, and oh my is it conservative. The month is down 36 percent versus 2019, and even domestic is down around 30 percent. None of the other airlines have gone this far and they unlikely to do so. Either United sees something or it’s having trouble getting the right crews flying the right airplanes.
United has also given up on flying to Naples and Venice this summer. Those are all gone. The airline has done a lot of gauge changing, swapping airplanes around on different routes. Into the fall, United added or took away a flight in several domestic markets. These are up:
- Denver – Eugene, Gillette, Prescott, Sheridan
And these are down:
- Chicago – Miami, Raleigh/Durham, West Palm Beach
- Denver – Colorado Springs, Fresno, Houston, Indianapolis
- Houston – Austin
- Newark – Charleston (SC), Sarasota
Other Randomness
- Aeromexico continues its Texas love by upping Houston – Mexico City from 3x to 4x daily.
- Air Canada won’t fly Algiers – Montreal this summer. It also won’t fly from Montreal to Keflavik, but it is beefing up Toronto to Keflavik instead.
- Eastern has canceled its plans to fly JFK to Anchorage and Quito this summer, but get ready for Chicago – Sarajevo to start in May.
- Porter has pushed its restart into June. At what point does the airline just give up entirely?
- Singapore won’t fly to Newark or Seattle in June. It won’t fly fifth freedom routes Houston – Manchester and Los Angeles – Tokyo/Narita either.
- WestJet has slashed several US and Caribbean routes through the summer — along with a couple into Europe — as it comes to grips with the fact that Canada is approaching another lost summer.
That’s all for this week. Stay tuned for next week’s exciting episode of Skeds of air Lines.