Boston-New York Gets Waterfront Flights
- Frontier Airlines will add 21 new routes between September and next April, doubling down on the U.S. leisure travel rebound. Atlanta, where the budget carrier will open a new crew base later this year, will receive nine of the new routes, including to Baltimore/Washington, Cancun, Detroit, New Orleans and St. Louis. Dallas-Fort Worth will boast seven new routes, including to Buffalo, Durango, Hartford and Phoenix; and Las Vegas five new routes to Des Moines, Harlingen, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Orleans and Sioux Falls. Frontier is one of the first U.S. carriers to fully recover to its pre-crisis capacity levels with third quarter capacity scheduled to be up 5 percent year-over-two-years, Cirium data show.
- The details are out for four new destinations JetBlue Airways will add under its controversial Northeast Alliance with American Airlines. The New York-based carrier will begin flights to San Antonio on October 31; Puerto Vallarta on February 19, 2022; and Kansas City and Milwaukee on March 27, 2022. San Antonio, Kansas City and Milwaukee will be served from both Boston and New York JFK, and Puerto Vallarta from just JFK.
- Ryanair is expanding its schedule in Liverpool and Manchester as the British travel recovery ramps up. The discounter will operate 110 weekly flights to 32 destinations from Liverpool, and 315 weekly flights to 67 destinations from Manchester. Ryanair will also serve ten new locations from each city — five this summer and another five this winter from Liverpool, and four this summer and six this winter from Manchester. New destinations from Liverpool include Rome, Paris Beauvais, Kos, Tallinn and Milan-Bergamo; and from Manchester include Bucharest, Zagreb, Salzburg, Satorini and Verona.
- Spirit Airlines has announced that it’s launching service to three new destinations from Atlantic City this fall. The carrier will fly nonstop to Cancun — the first international dot for the New Jersey city — Miami and San Juan from the Atlantic City International Airport. The additions will increase the number of locations Spirit serves from the city to ten.
- Tailwind Air will begin nonstop waterfront-to-waterfront flight between Boston and New York on August 3. The airline will operate the 75-minute flights between Boston Harbor and East 23rd Street in Manhattan with eight-passenger Cessna Caravans seaplanes. But the service won’t come cheap: fares start at $395 one-way. This compares to as low as $69 on Amtrak’s Acela or $134 on either American or Delta Air Lines‘ shuttles from LaGuardia on August 3. Cape Air is also seeking authority to offer seaplane service between the Boston and New York waterfronts.
- More pandemic route map adjustments are coming to United Airlines. The carrier will drop Paine Field — located in the northern Seattle suburbs — from its map on Oct. 5, according to Cirium schedules and confirmed by United. The move comes as Alaska Airlines, the only other carrier serving Paine Field, plans to resume its full pre-crisis schedule at the airport by next spring. United’s exit opens the door to a new airline at the airport where commercial flights are limited to 24 a day.
— Edward Russell and Rashaad Jorden