Greetings from Airlineville, where it seems like everyone is doing their own thing this week.
On the one hand, we have the Widget trying to do some housekeeping, getting rid of all that stuff that won’t get any use all winter long. On the other hand, we have the Jet of the West still thinking about what to do in August. It’s hard to get summer off the brain when you spend so much time in Canada, apparently.
The Cirium data also shows our friend the Globe dipping into the lap of luxury, leaning toward a First Class experience for trips to New York.
All this and more this week. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the skeds of air lines.
Allegiant Does Things in Reverse
Last week, Allegiant filed a slew of new flights in the new year, but this week it went backwards, filling in those new flights for later this year and rolling through the holidays. It’s an odd way to do it, but the end result is the last four months of the year gained 1.3 and 3.9 percent in available seat miles to get closer to what Allegiant had filed for 2022 last week.
Avelo Restructures Burbank
Avelo extended its schedule beyond September 15, and it changed its plans in Burbank. Bozeman and Grand Junction are gone. Phoenix/Mesa is as well, but Avelo says it is changing flight times and dates and then hopes it can bring Mesa around again. Ogden drops from 6x weekly to 4x while Santa Rosa goes from daily to four days a week… but on two of those days, it’ll fly twice. Medford drops from 4x weekly to 2x weekly. Bend and Redding go from 3x weekly to 2x. Avelo now won’t fly Wednesday or Saturday, and it’ll have only one roundtrip on Tuesday. We still have nothing for the New Haven schedule, the airline’s second base.
Delta Cuts Through Winter
Delta was busy this week, cutting 2.7 to 5.8 percent of available seat miles through the winter season. There was a significant change of gauge, largely focused on Atlanta, that saw frequencies reduced but larger aircraft in the schedule. The 50-seaters continue to be pulled, as do the 717s. Beyond that, some routes were cut back without gaining larger airplanes. It was a mixed bag. These are gone entirely through the winter unless noted:
- Atlanta – Barcelona, Dublin, Stuttgart
- Boston – Dublin
- Los Angeles – Fresno (gone for good)
- Minneapolis/St Paul – Albuquerque, Lansing (through Feb), Saginaw (through Feb)
- New York/JFK – Keflavik, Nice, Venice
- Raleigh/Durham – Jacksonville (gone for good)
Meanwhile, Raleigh/Durham and Cincinnati saw their non-hub flying suspensions extended through September and in most cases, October.
United Also Plays With Gauge
United promised it would be retiring a lot of those single-cabin 50-seaters, and you know what? It is not wasting time. This week, all of those were pulled out of the Newark hub starting October 31, mostly replaced by CRJ-550s. That’s the same number of seats but with a whole bunch of First Class and Economy Plus on a bigger airframe.
The 757 was also removed from the schedule. To be clear, these were the pre-merger United 757s that remained in the fleet flying transcon routes. The 752 took that over and remains a strong performer. Those are the pre-merger Continental aircraft.
Lastly, a handul of markets lost a daily frequency through the winter, unless otherwise noted:
- Chicago/O’Hare – Evansville, Lansing
- Denver – El Paso, Hartford
- Los Angeles – Monterey (-2x daily)
- Newark – Providence, Washington/Dulles
- Washington/Dulles – Boston, Newark, Portland (ME), Providence
Other Randomness
- Air Canada has extended Kelowna – Montreal through the winter.
- Air France won’t fly LA – Papeete in July, but it did increase flights from 3x weekly to 5x weekly from November.
- Air New Zealand won’t resume LA – Raratonga until next year at the earliest.
- Boutique Air has canceled flights from Greenville (MS) to New Orleans.
- EVA has extended its pandemic schedule through September with big cuts on US routes.
- LATAM has canceled the Miami – Recife and Salvador routes through the end of the year.
- Porter has pushed its restart date to September 8, and this time that might stick.
- Viva Air is upping its Medellín – Orlando flight from 3x to 5x weekly.
- WestJet cut its August schedule down to size, but being at 55 percent vs 2019 seems like wishful thinking as of now.
That’s all for this week. Stay tuned for next week’s exciting episode of Skeds of air Lines. And if you can’t wait, here’s what subscribers of Cranky Network Weekly can see this week:
- Delta Upgauges as It Cuts Flights
- Avelo Pivots With Its First Schedule Extension
- United Moves the ERJ Out of Newark
- Porter May Finally, Actually Restart
- Flair Plans a Very Different US Strategy