New routes for American, Alaska, JetBlue, Frontier

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Alaska Airlines will add three routes from Portland International next winter. (Image: Jim Glab)

In route news, Alaska is adding a trio of routes out of Portland, American is extending its reach from LaGuardia into the Midwest, Frontier adds some markets and drops some, and JetBlue tacks on a new spoke from its Ft. Lauderdale hub.

• Alaska Airlines has set a mid-February start for three new routes out of Portland, Oregon, where it will begin operating one daily roundtrip each to Kansas City, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Omaha.

• American Airlines plans to add new daily service November 3 between New York LaGuardia and Akron-Canton Airport in Ohio, around the same time that Southwest drops that route. (Earlier, United had said it will begin new Akron-Newark flights in late October.) American also will begin twice-daily flights on November 5 between LaGuardia and Memphis. Both routes will use regional jets. And December 17 is the launch date for new twice-daily American service between LGA and Jacksonville, Fla., with 69-seat E170s.

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• Ultra-low-cost Frontier Airlines continues to shuffle its route network. in the latest announcement, Frontier will add seven routes on October 24-25, with one daily roundtrip in each. Those include service from Las Vegas to San Francisco, Miami, Houston and Milwaukee; from Orlando to Indianapolis and Los Angeles; and from Philadelphia to Ft. Myers. Also in October, Frontier will scale back a bit at Cincinnati, dropping its daily n on-stops to Ft. Lauderdale and Atlanta (but reviving Atlanta next year as seasonal service), and trimming its schedule to Las Vegas by 50 percent.

• Effective November 19, JetBlue will begin daily service from its growing Ft. Lauderdale hub to Charleston, S.C., with a 100-seat E190.  It already serves Charleston from New York, Washington and Boston.

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