Etihad ended its 777 flights from San Francisco to Abu Dhabi last month- now another city gets dropped (Photo: Peter Biaggi / SFO)
In international route developments, Etihad drops another U.S. gateway and blames American; El Al comes back to Miami; Southwest adds three Latin America/Caribbean destinations from Ft. Lauderdale; and there’s new service to Mexico from Delta/Aeromexico, Alaska, Volaris, Interjet and Viva Aerobus.
Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways continues to struggle in the U.S. market. Late last month, it ended its San Francisco route, and it recently announced plans to trim its Los Angeles schedule from seven flights a week to four from mid-January through April. And now the carrier said it will suspend its daily flights from Dallas/Ft. Worth to Abu Dhabi, effective March 25. The airline said the Texas route “will become commercially unsustainable following American Airlines’ unilateral decision to terminate its codeshare agreement ” with Etihad. Company officials said almost half the passengers on its DFW flights were connecting from AA domestic code-shares. Etihad said that depending on how its summer bookings go, “further changes” are possible in its U.S. route network.
El Al uses a 777-200 on new Miami flights. (Image: El Al)
Nine years ago, Israel’s El Al ended its Tel Aviv-Miami service — but now it’s back. Last week, El Al started flying the route once again, operating three flights a week with a 777-200. The Israeli carrier also flies from Tel Aviv to New York JFK, Newark, Los Angeles, Boston and Toronto.
Southwest continues to expand its international schedule from Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport, where earlier this year it opened an expansion of Terminal 1 to accommodate those flights. This week, Southwest started daily service to three new destinations from FLL –Providenciales in the Turks & Caicos; San Jose, Costa Rica; and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. At Houston Hobby, meanwhile, Southwest just announced plans to start service next June to Grand Cayman.
There’s lots of activity in the U.S.-Mexico market these days. Alaska Airlines, which started flying to Mexico City from San Francisco and Los Angeles in August, has now kicked off San Diego-MEX flights. Alaska partner SkyWest operates the daily flights with an E175.
Aeromexico just started Seattle-Mexico City 737 flights. (Image: San Jose Airport).
Meanwhile, Delta and Aeromexico continue to develop their joint venture partnership. They just opened up new daily service between Delta’s Atlanta hub and Queretaro, Mexico, flying the route with a two-class Aeromexico E190. And last week, Aeromexico launched service from Delta’s growing Seattle hub to Mexico City, using a 737-800 for the daily year-round flights.
Mexican carriers are also adding new service. Low-cost carrier InterJet is adding three routes out of Los Angeles International this month. On November 23, it will begin daily flights to Leon/Guanajuato (close to popular San Miguel de Allende) and three flights a week to Los Cabos, followed on November 24 by four weekly roundtrips from LAX to Puerto Vallarta. On December 19, Volaris will inaugurate weekly service from LAX to Acapulco. And on December 16, vivaAerobus plans to launch daily A320 flights between Mexico City and Las Vegas.
Finally, Southwest Airlines said it will expand service to Cancun on June 9 of next year by adding seasonal Saturday flights from Pittsburgh and Raleigh-Durham. That means that on Saturdays next summer, Southwest will be operating 27 flights to Cancun from 16 U.S. cities.
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Give me a break. The 787 is not designed or optimized for that kind of route. That’s a fact. That doesn’t mean it’s illegal or impossible to use it on that route. Surely you can grasp that? I promise you that when Boeing was designing the requirements for this plane, GMP-CJU is not a route that they considered
I’ll remember that next time I’m on a 787 from GMP to CJU. 30 minutes wheels up to wheels down and packed full.
787 was absolutely not optimised for such short routes and that is not the selling point for that plane. 787 is sold as perfect for long thin routes, not short thin routes. There are many other planes that are marketed for routes like this. Most interesting is the new C-Series
Neither the market is that strong. I can’t see an airline filling a 787 on such a thin route
Would be nice if Aeromexico put a 787 on the SEA-MEX (5 hours) route instead of a knee cramping 737. That said, there are many U.S. long transcon routes like SEA-MIA (6 plus hours) that could be improved with the 787. Point to point was the big 787 sell by Boeing, but airlines aren’t interested in delivering comfort to their pax.