In international route news, China’s Hainan starts a Los Angeles route; Canada’s WestJet plans new U.S. routes; Iberia sets its summer LAX schedule; new overseas code-share flights for United and Delta; British Airways brings 787s to more U.S. cities; and Brazil’s Azul drops a U.S. route.
China’s Hainan Airlines, which flies to Chicago to Beijing and from Boston and Seattle to both Shanghai and Beijing, has kicked off a new U.S. route between Los Angeles and Changsha, the capital of central China’s Hunan Province with a population of 2.3 million. Hainan, a code-sharing partner of American Airlines, is using a 787-8 on the route, which operates twice a week.
Canadian low-cost carrier WestJet said its summer schedule will include new non-stop flights from Toronto to Los Angeles and to Nashville as well as from Vancouver to San Diego. In addition, WestJet will begin new service from Toronto to Boston on March 15 with three flights a day. On June 15, WestJet’s Encore unit will begin five flights a week on the new Toronto-Nashville route with Q400 turboprops. June 29 is the launch date for daily Toronto-Los Angeles 737 service, and on June 16, WestJet begins three 737 flights a week between San Diego and Vancouver.
Iberia Airlines, a member of American’s Oneworld alliance, has set its summer schedule for Los Angeles-Madrid service, according to Airlineroute.net. It begins March 30 with three weekly flights, increasing to five a week on May 26, six a week beginning June 6, and daily from July 3 to August 28. (Last year, Iberia only had four summer flights a week on the route.) The airline will use A330s and A340s for the LAX flights.

British Airways bringing more 787s to US. (Image: British Airways)
British Airways plans to pull the 787-9 from its Austin-London Heathrow route on March 27, according to Airlineroute.net, and to replace it with a 777-200ER. But the airline is bringing 787s to more U.S. routes. It will begin 787-9 flights between Houston Bush Intercontinental and London on March 27, instead of August 1 as previously planned. And 787-9 service on the Newark-LHR route moves up to April 2 from August 1. BA will also use a 787-9 from Philadelphia to London on selected flights beginning April 9, and is sticking to its original May 4 stating date for new London-San Jose 787-9 service.
United Airlines has started putting its code onto several intra-European flights of Star Alliance partner Lufthansa’s low-cost affiliate Eurowings. The UA code is now on Eurowings flights from Dusseldorf to Geneva, Birmingham, Manchester, Milan Malpensa and Paris CDG; and from Hamburg to Dusseldorf, LHR, Manchester, Prague, Stuttgart, Toulouse and Zurich. MileagePlus members will get revenue and status miles on the flights.

Delta selling tickets on India’s Jet Airways (Photo: Aero Icarus / Flickr)
Delta has started selling tickets for its new code-share service with India’s Jet Airways, which it is starting along with joint venture partner KLM. Effective for travel beginning March 27, Delta’s code goes onto Jet’s flights from Amsterdam to Delhi and Bombay, as well as service beyond those gateways. From Delhi, it’s on Jet’s flights to Amritsar, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata; and from Mumbai to Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Kolkata.
Brazilian airline Azul, which operates a daily A330 flight between Orlando and Belo Horizonte, Brazil, plans to discontinue that route on February 29.
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