Air France Takes on Transat

• Air France will add a fourth Canadian point to its map this summer. The SkyTeam member will connect Quebec City to its Paris Charles de Gaulle hub thrice weekly with an Airbus A330-200 from May 17. Air France will go up against leisure-operator Transat on the route. Quebec City complements Air France’s existing service to Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.
  
• Qatar Airways is adding two more African destinations to its map in March. The Oneworld carrier will connect Doha with Kano from March 2, and Port Harcourt from March 3. Kano flights will operate four-times weekly via Abuja, and Port Harcourt thrice weekly also via Abuja on Boeing 787 aircraft. Qatar will be the only Gulf carrier serving either destination, though Saudia flies to Kano and Turkish Airlines to Port Harcourt, Cirium schedules show.
  
• The U.S. pilot shortage continues to take its toll on airline schedules. American Airlines is the latest to disclose route cuts with seven markets suspended from March 3 into April, according to Cirium schedules. Suspended routes include flights between Chicago O’Hare and Evansville, Ind., Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., Huntsville, Ala., and Montreal; Dallas-Fort Worth and Long Beach; and Los Angeles and both Northwest Arkansas and Reno. An American spokesperson described the move as one to “mitigate any future travel disruptions” from the shortage.
  
• Avianca continues the drum beat of new routes on its way to 50 additions by 2023. Following two additions to the U.S. earlier in January, the Star Alliance carrier has unveiled five more new routes: Bogotá to Ipiales, Colombia; Medellin to Riohacha, Colombia; and San Jose, Costa Rica, to Cartagena, Medellin, and Quito. All of the routes begin in late March, except for Bogotá-Ipiales that begins on May 16. Avianca also plans to resume service to London Heathrow on March 28.
  
• Eurowings is expanding its new Stockholm base before it even opens. The Lufthansa Group discounter will connect Stockholm’s Arlanda airport to Rhodes from May 31, and Heraklion from June 2. Both routes will operate twice weekly. Eurowings will serve 18 cities nonstop from Stockholm with the additions, and the resumption of flights to Cologne Bonn on May 20.
  
• Frontier Airlines is taking on discount giant Southwest Airlines with 13 routes from two of its largest bases. Frontier will connect Chicago Midway to Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Las Vegas, Ontario, Calif., Phoenix, Tampa, and Trenton, N.J., from April; and to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando from October. And in May, the airline will connect Houston Hobby to Cancun, Las Vegas, and Orlando. Frontier will compete with Southwest on all but two of the routes — Chicago to Dallas-Fort Worth and Trenton — per Cirium. However, Southwest connects Chicago to Dallas Love Field, and Philadelphia; two airports serving similar catchment areas as DFW and Trenton.
  
• Ryanair is adding 11 new routes from its Dublin home with the addition of a 33rd aircraft at its base there. The discounter will serve 120 destinations from Dublin this summer with the additions of Agadir, Morocco; Alghero, Italy; Cardiff, U.K.; Košice, Slovakia; Madeira, Portugal; Nimes, France; Nuremberg, Germany; Plovdiv, Bulgaria; Sibiu and Suceava, România; and Zagreb, Croatia.
  
• 33 years was a good run. That’s how long Cape Air has continuously flown the Boston-Provincetown route that, due to the pilot shortage plaguing U.S. regionals and elevated sick calls due to staff out with Covid-19, the airline is suspending from the end of January through April 1. The suspension is the longest in the airline’s history on the route.

— Edward Russell