Delta and United Set Schedules Until the Holidays, Frontier Goes Capacity Crazy

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On the surface, the Cirium data made it look like a relatively quiet week in Airlineville. Maybe they were all masked up, isolating in their homes just like I was. Or maybe they were quietly hatching plans for the future.

It was most certainly the latter for both the Widget and the Globe. It may not have looked like much, but they both seem to have made their plans all the way until the holidays hit in December. That just seems so far away.

Meanwhile, the Animal behaved like a fast-growing giraffe and just kept going up, up, and up. And wait, what’s this? The Eagle’s family in New York is planning on going to the Caribbean this winter? That’s an odd change of pace.

All this and more this week. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the skeds of air lines.

Air Canada Gets Ready

Air Canada is ready for Americans, and it has started to build in more frequency. In particular it looks like Vancouver and Toronto are the ones that gain. Montreal, well, it is losing Cairo for the winter and sees a few other trims. Lastly, the bustling route of Halifax – Goose Bay is gone, and I know we’re all sad about that.

Alaska Plays In Its Namesake State

Alaska is making some changes to its intra-Alaska schedule through the winter and beyond. Anchorage – King Salmon is back as a roundtrip, as is Anchorage – Dillingham now that they’ve been decoupled. Barrow will get Anchorage instead of Fairbanks. Fairbanks also loses Prudhoe Bay.

Paine Field is back to getting beaten up again. It will have Boise and Spokane cut down to daily this fall. LA, San Francisco, and San Jose are now gone through February. Portland is gone beyond that. Frequencies are cut elsewhere into the new year.

Lastly, Alaska pulled down about 1 percent of seat miles in October. It’s mostly shorter-flying, higher-frequency flying from Seattle that gets trimmed.

American Does More Caribbean with a Focus on New York

American is back to building up Caribbean flying this winter. JFK gets a noticeable bump with Antigua increasing from 6x weekly to 1x daily, Providenciales operating 1x weekly, and both Punta Cana and St Thomas going from 1x weekly to 1x daily. Its only loss is Bermuda, which goes away, but I don’t count that as Caribbean anyway.

Other than that, Chicago gets another daily Cancun flight and weekly Cozumel flying comes back in November, earlier than planned. It also sees more Montego Bay, Puerto Vallarta, and Punta Cana. Philly, meanwhile, will add 2x more weekly flights to Santo Domingo, and it will have new 4x weekly to Santiago (DR).

Delta Sets Pre-Holiday Schedules

Delta has pulled November down 7.6 percent with December down 3.4 percent. This gets Delta to a semblance of a flyable schedule through the first half of December. It has even set a Halloween and Thanksgiving schedule, so it has made some more nuanced cuts.

The airline has also played with frequency in a few markets, adding Salt Lake – West Yellowstone, Moab, and Cody and bumping up Colorado Springs and Great Falls. While we’re on Salt Lake, it’s out of Guadalajara for good.

Delta has also now put its 757s with flat beds on the Boston – San Francisco route through the end of the schedule. Before it was only there in the short term.

Frontier Goes Nuts Again

Frontier was busy again this week, increasing October capacity by more than 20 percent. Vegas and Orlando are the big winners while Miami is the biggest loser. It also added more new routes for the long run, but those were already announced, so you can read the release for details.

JetBlue Goes Skiing

It was a quiet week, but JetBlue did find the time to add flying to Steamboat Springs from both Boston and Fort Lauderdale this winter.

Southwest Builds Back Up

Now that Southwest has cut back September and October it’s time to start adding back. Southwest put almost a point of capacity back for September, mostly leisure markets, as usual.

Spirit Was Busy

Oh, Spirit wasn’t busy here. It filed nothing. I just assumed Spirit was far too busy trying to figure out how to put the airline back together again. No time for future schedules!

United Takes a Similar Cut as Delta

United had a remarkably similar percentage cut for November into mid-December compared to Delta. Both airlines are trying to create flyable schedules further out, but United’s looks like it’s primed for more changes. It has now canceled a lot of the West Coast overflying of Denver through January. Those flights haven’t been operating (like Madison, Detroit, Omaha), and now they won’t operate for longer. Some from Denver will get the same treatment, like Dayton and Santa Rosa. You can pick these out in every hub, like Newark – Oklahoma City and Dulles – Panama City. On the bright side, Denver gets flights to Butte from January.

Oh, and Auckland is now out through November. That is most definitely going to be extended again.

Other Randomness

  • Allegiant must not have liked Reno – Orange County, because that is gone.
  • British Airways may be seeing borders open for Americans, but Brits still can’t come to the US. For that reason, Vegas flights won’t operate in August.
  • Cabo Verde Airlines is back in the US with 1x weekly Boston – Praia service coming back in October.
  • Denver Air Connection is planning to be back white-knuckling it into Telluride this winter from both Denver and Phoenix.
  • Fiji Airways will only fly a couple of repatriation flights in Oct and Nov to LA. No other US service will operate.
  • Iberia will boost JFK – Madrid from 1x daily to 10x weekly starting in November.
  • LATAM won’t fly Boston – Sao Paulo through the winter, it is downgauging JFK – Lima and Santiago, and LA – Santiago gets cut back. LA – Lima will grow as will Miami – Santiago. And Miami – Punta Cana will come back 1x weekly.
  • Turkish filed schedules for its new Dallas/Fort Worth – Istanbul flight starting next month.
  • WestJet is going to fly from Calgary to Seattle starting in November.

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned for next week’s exciting episode of Skeds of air Lines. And for those who can’t wait — and who have not previously requested a sample report — here’s what we’re talking about this week in Cranky Network Weekly.

  • United, Delta Approach the Future Differently
  • American Rebuilding New York – Caribbean
  • LATAM Tries to Regain Its Lost US Share
  • Air Canada’s Uneven International Growth
  • Frontier Grows Massively Again

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19 comments on “Delta and United Set Schedules Until the Holidays, Frontier Goes Capacity Crazy

  1. Hey Cranky! I hope you & the family are feeling better soon. As for everyone else reading this… get VACCINATED if you haven’t already done so.

    It’s interesting how some week to week schedule changes have a certain degree of logic to them, but there are others that are down right whiplash inducing.

  2. Random low-caffeine Monday morning observations and questions of low importance (hey, it’s Monday):

    * Am I the only one who finds the idea of a town and an airport named “King Salmon” wonderfully silly?

    * On Frontier’s additions: how much additional capacity can Belize City take? Yes, these are only 1x/week, but BZE has high-season service from the other majors except B6 and NK already, and has Sun Country too. I’ve been there twice and love Belize, and the country has been adding hotel/resort space, but demand is still finite.

    * Is there some sort of marketing reason Frontier is calling SWF “New Windsor, NY”? I’ve never heard it called that, it’s either “Stewart”, “Newburgh-Stewart”, sometimes “Newburgh”, and occasionally “definitely not New York City unless you like long bus rides” :-)

    1. Hi Craig TPA,

      Although called Newburgh, SWF is in fact in New Windsor NY FYI, but most are unaware. Most airports are not actually in the city that carries that cities name. Some examples… DTW, HFD, DFW, IAD, SFO & most notably DEN as it’s the airport furthest away from any big city. NYC, Chicago & Boston are the few exceptions to this convention.

      1. In Chicago’s case, the city actually annexed the area around ORD back in the day. If look at the map of Chicago, ORD is like a little peninsula sticking out of the city.

        1. I remember reading somewhere that it was required that both Chicago airports be within city limits & that is why land was annexed so O’Hare could be built. Otherwise it would have been in I believe Rosemont?

        2. Chris:

          That is also why all of the contact phone numbers at O’hare have either a 773 or a 312 area code (Chicago) as opposed to the 847 area code for the surrounding Rosemont.

          It was done to help the “illusion” that O’hare is in the city of Chicago and not the suburbs :)

        3. There was actually a complicated bit of horse-trading in the 1950s between Rosemont’s founding Mayor-for-Life, Donald Stephens, and Chicago’s then Mayor-for-Life Richard J. Daley.

          Rosemont de-annexed a strip of land along its southern border – a few hundred feet wide – so that Chicago could annex it as a connection to the site of O’Hare.

          In exchange, Rosemont gained access to Lake Michigan water through the Chicago water system. Previously, they had relied on wells which produced poor quality water, and not enough of it.

      2. Orange County’s airport is called Santa Ana which always confuses me because it feels more like Irvine.

        Denver airport actually is in the city limits as a giant exclave. (Although attached by a narrow strip). I could be wrong but it feels about as close if not closer to downtown Denver than LAX does to downtown LA.

        1. Putting google maps to use, you’ll see DFW is 25% Euless, 25% Grapevine and 50% Irving. Ft. Worth has this small sliver of annexation that goes just south of DFW where the center port area is (and American’s headquarters) and has always been the location of a couple of gentleman’s establishments as none of the surrounding suburbs would allow them (or alcohol sales back in the day for that matter). Of course the center port area is where the Greater Southwest International Airport was prior to building DFW. Used to always make out the old runway pattern before they added more warehouses over the last 15 years or so.

          Dallas city limits don’t even really get close to DFW, though when you search on google for various building in and around the airport the show it as Dallas, TX.

          Not sure I’ve ever heard the area referred to as DFW Airport, TX, @Jolly, but it wouldn’t shock me. Putting google to use, you can see 2 post office buildings by the rental car facility right next door, one says DFW Airport, TX and one says Irving, TX for the address… and the Starbucks next to it says Dallas, TX. That post office used to be closer to the airport terminal (and one of the latest pickup spots in the metro)!

          No one has any idea where they are in the metroplex!

        2. SEA is similar, it’s in “SeaTac, WA” The city surrounds the airport, but includes residential areas.

          They got a lot of publicity when they instituted the $15/hr minimum wage for employees of businesses related to the airport.

      3. HFD is within the city limits of Hartford, CT. It’s on the very southern edge of the city just south of the Charter Oak Bridge. I don’t recall there ever being commercial service there in the last 50 years though.

      4. HFD lies within the city of Hartford, CA. It’s just south of the Charter Oak Bridge. However, it hasn’t had any commercial service in a long time.

      5. DEN is actually in the city of Denver – in a weird geographic way. If you pull up Denver on Google Maps you can see the outline of where the city/county of Denver (who also runs the airport) is outlined, compared to the other local cities/suburbs.

        The city annexed the land from the adjacent county when it was built – so driving from the airport to downtown is almost all in the city of Denver, except for a very small piece in Aurora at the Pena/70 interchange.

      6. And, there’s the Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG), which is located in Hebron, Kentucky. Many visitors to the airport, along with many more connecting through it, are shocked when they find out that they are in Kentucky, not Ohio (that is, IF they find out!).

        1. Ahh yea, good one @SkyVoice. Lived for a time north of Cincinnati and sometimes we would take the round about way to the airport that would loop around the city, having us enter Indiana before crossing the Ohio River into Kentucky to get to CVG instead of going through downtown to get there.

      7. Didn’t know that, I’ve never heard SWF called New Windsor before, even when the PANYNJ took over operation of the airport in 2007. I lived in NYC at the time and never really figured out why the Port Authority did that.

        Interesting to see Frontier starting service, hope it works out.

  3. AT MSP, the airport is neither in the cities of Minneapolis or St. Paul, rather the airport is located within unincorporated Hennepin County.

    SO_CAL_RETAIL_SLUT

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