JetBlue, AirTran, Virgin America adding new routes

By Joe Brancatelli

The nation’s alternate carriers are scrambling to make service cuts,
too, but a lot of the planes are being redeployed onto new routes.
JetBlue Airways, for example, says it will add several new flights in
the fall, including Long Beach-Portland, Oregon, and Tampa-White
Plains, New York, both on November 2. It is also offering three new
routes from Washington/Dulles: Fort Myers and West Palm Beach, Florida
(December 18), and Saturday-only service to Puerto Rico (December 20).
… AirTran Airways is adding two new routes: twice-weekly flights from
Baltimore/Washington to San Juan (December 20) and twice-daily flights
from Richmond, Virginia, to New York/LaGuardia (August 7). … Horizon
Air, the commuter carrier of Alaska Airlines, is adding some flights, too. It will begin service between Los Angeles and Prescott, Arizona,
on September 8. Also new: seasonal service from Los Angeles to Mammoth,
the ski destination, starting December 18. … Virgin America will add
nonstop New York/Kennedy to Las Vegas flights on September 4.

INTERNATIONAL ITINERARY

Time to say goodbye: The first tranche of flights that the airlines were dropping in our
current fuel-fired crisis were largely domestic. Now they are beginning
to drop international routes, too. Delta Air Lines, for example, drops
service from its Atlanta hub to Vienna; Ottawa, Canada; and Leon,
Mexico. Also off the international route map: China Air Lines service
from Seattle to Taipei and United’s San Francisco-Toronto flights. All
the routes end in September. Late in October, United Airlines will drop
service on three more international routes: Denver-London; Los
Angeles-Frankfurt; and San Francisco-Nagoya. And United has now decided
that it won’t even bother to launch its flights from Washington/Dulles
to Moscow, which was supposed to begin in October. … Aeromexico is
dropping service to three cities from Mexico City: Los Angeles, Phoenix
and Austin.