Many Airlines Cut Into 2022 While One Bucks the Trend

Schedule Changes

Sometimes, things start to feel the same week in and week out for the residents of Airlineville. As the Cirium data shows, the residents just keep cutting back on plans, and they’re doing it much further in advance.

This week alone, the Eskimo, Ms Blue, the Heart, and the Globe all pulled back not for Thanksgiving or the winter holidays, no. They’ve already decided they were going to do too much in 2022. Then there’s the Animal. That guy had a completely different idea.

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

Air Canada Makes Two Moves

It wasn’t a busy week for Air Canada, but the airline did make two moves worth mentioning. First, it extended its suspension of direct Canada – Hong Kong flights through year-end. Those will go via Incheon. Second, it is bringing back business-focused Toronto/City – Ottawa service later this month.

Alaska Cuts Into May

Alaska keeps going further and further out with its schedule. This week, it picked up by cutting the back half of March all the way into May, bringing those down as the airline has already done for previous months. April seat miles were down more than 15 percent. This now has March as flat vs 2019 while April is up 4 percent. In other news, the airline added Anchorage – Salt Lake flights for next summer.

American Works on the Caribbean

American made some (possibly) interesting swaps in the Caribbean this winter. The airline reduced frequency in Boston – Providenciales; DFW – St Thomas; Miami – Kingston, St Croix, St Kitts, Port-au-Prince (the latter of which is actually down through end of schedule); and New York/JFK – St Kitts while it increased frequency in Punta Cana from Charlotte, Miami, and Philly along with St Maarten from Miami.

Delta Does Minor Trimming

It was a very quiet week for Delta, though the most significant change was the suspension of Seattle – London now into March. Virgin Atlantic did the same, so that market must really be suffering. Separately it dropped Detroit – Amsterdam from as much as 2x daily down to 1x into March.

In bad news for you Durango-lovers, Delta has reversed those holiday additions from last week. It’s now back out of Durango entirely. And just for fun, it’s also out of West Yellowstone until May.

Frontier Goes Nuts Again

Another week, another chance for Frontier to add an absurd amount of capacity. This week it started after the holidays in Jan and went into March and a bit beyond. February capacity was up a mind-boggling 27.1 percent this week. Most of this looks like extensions from previous schedules that have already been spiked up, but there were some notable new routes in Cancun and Tampa. New routes are:

  • Cancun – Baltimore, Boston, Columbus, Detroit, Minneapolis/St Paul, Raleigh/Durham
  • Tampa – Bloomington/Normal, Columbus, Green Bay, New York/LaGuardia, Rochester

Hawaiian Brings November Down

While some airlines have begun pulling down further out, Hawaiian is only now pulling down its November international schedule. That’s not very far away. In more exciting news for the airline, it looks like Hawaiian is officially giving Austin a permanent 3rd weekly flight.

JetBlue Prunes Again

JetBlue decided to bring down December – February this week by another 2 to 3 percent points. December is now down 2 percent vs 2019 while January is up 8 percent and February 11 percent. No routes were cut entirely in this trim except for Fort Lauderdale – Portland (OR) which is now gone into February.

Southwest Takes a Little Off the Top

After a week of slumber, Southwest decided to take down post-holiday January and February about 2 percent. There didn’t seem to be any particular focal points in the cut, just a broad drawdown. The one route to disappear into February is Norfolk – San Diego which has to be for military reasons.

Spirit Adds in Manchester

Spirit started Manchester flights this week, so that means it also announced a new route from the airport. Myrtle Beach starts in April.

United Was Busy

United crowed about its big December schedule in a press release a few days ago, but it didn’t actually do much in December this week. January came down more than 8 percent with February close behind and even March getting in on the action. These routes are now gone through February.

  • Chicago – Bend, Bismarck, Calgary, Eugene, Jackson, Ottawa, Pasco, Rapid City, San Jose, Vancouver, Wilmington (NC)
  • Denver – Dayton, Edmonton, Santa Rosa
  • Houston – Columbia (SC), Edmonton, Joplin, Vancouver
  • Los Angeles – Madison
  • Newark – Asheville, Berlin, Bangor, Halifax, Knoxville, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Quebec City
  • San Francisco – Calgary, Northwest Arkansas, Oklahoma City, St Louis, Toronto
  • Washington/Dulles – Lexington, Madison, Panama City (FL)

Also, San Francisco – Shanghai will now not happen through Feb with service remaining via Incheon. And Denver – Columbia (MO) is gone for good.

We also have new, or shall I say, returning routes this week. Cleveland will get both Las Vegas and Phoenix from December for the winter. Fort Myers will return with service to Columbus, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh. Indianapolis will get a new route to Orlando as well. It appears the Boston and LaGuardia to Florida service will not return.

Other Randomness

  • Aer Lingus is shaving 2x weekly off its current plans for 1x daily Dublin – Orlando service from March. Dublin – LA’s restart has been pushed into March. Seattle now won’t start until April, and when it does, it will be at 5x weekly instead of 1x daily.
  • Aha! filed its schedules. I already wrote about that last week, but man, it’s weird seeing the EV code back from the dead.
  • Air France is planning to resume Paris – Los Angeles – Papeete service in November after routing through Vancouver while the US border was closed. When it returns, however, it will be at 3x weekly instead of the previously-filed 5x.
  • Air France also can’t decide how it feels about Miami. It will now bring back 1x weekly service from Miami to Port-au-Prince in November.
  • Avelo pulled Burbank down to only 2 airplanes instead of 3 starting late in January. It also boosted New Haven flying post-holiday. Orlando will go from 5x weekly to 1x daily, Fort Myers goes from 2x weekly to 5x weekly, and Tampa goes from 3x weekly to 4x weekly.
  • Jeju Air will be leaving the Incheon – Guam market this month.
  • ITA is back in the US!. Alitalia may be dead for now, but its successor will start Rome – JFK in Nov followed by Boston and Miami in March. JFK – Milan also returns in March, and then the airline is making the bold statement that it will still exist in June when plans Rome – LA.
  • Lufthansa already been selling Eurowings Discover long-haul flights under the LH code, but now it has finally transferred the flying to the Eurowings Discover 4Y code, something it said it would do back in July. This impacts all flights to Anchorage, Fort Myers, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Tampa in the US.
  • Philippine will move 1 of its 7 weekly SFO – Manila flights to Cebu.
  • Qantas moved its restart of LAX into November as promised last week.
  • Southern Air Express has extended/filed Nantucket service this winter to Lancaster, New Bedford, Norwood, and Providence.
  • WestJet is going to cut back 2x weekly from its Halifax-Dublin route to bring it to 4x weekly next summer. That, however, will be complemented with new 1x daily service from Toronto to Dublin.

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned for next week’s exciting episode of Skeds of air Lines.

Get Cranky in Your Inbox!

The airline industry moves fast. Sign up and get every Cranky post in your inbox for free.

12 comments on “Many Airlines Cut Into 2022 While One Bucks the Trend

  1. Can we finally admit the assumptions that were being made by route planners at most airlines in recent months were just to unrealistic? It seems their view is to try to run a 2019 schedule during a pandemic that is still raging despite increasing vaccination rates.

    1. Not true at all. What US airlines have been doing since the start of the pandemic is they continue to put up their full “normal” schedule and then 2-3 months in advance they go in and trim the schedule down to better match demand. The pandemic rendered all normal or standard forecasting models airlines use to predict demand useless, this is why airlines have resorted to adjusting their schedule at what many people would consider last minute.

  2. The Delta West Yellowstone service has always been seasonal. It always runs from approximately May to approximately September. I think is running a bit longer than usual this year, into October. The big news was that United added West Yellowstone flights from Denver this year. It will be interesting to see if those come back next year.

  3. Preview of future attractions on Skeds of air Lines
    After a disastrous weekend, Southwest execs just said they are still understaffed and will cut whatever capacity it needs to cut in order to stabilize their operations. problem is that they have said the same thing multiple times during the pandemic.

  4. Where did F9 get the slots for LGA-TPA, or did they already have these and weren’t using them?

    I’m really questioning this route: we already have LGA service on Delta, JetBlue, and Southwest, and seasonally on Spirit, plus service from JFK (B6/DL) and EWR (B6/NK/UA). Is this LTD?

    1. CraigTPA – Considering how unreliable the Frontier schedule is this far in advance, I assume they’ll just cancel down flights that perform the worst as it gets closer until they hit their number of slots.

  5. I often wonder why people seem to gloat or even cheer when something bad happens to others. I had a teacher in college who observed that could be a sense of relief that it’s not happening to us. He may have been right. It seems to be a general human response to adversity. The reason I’m writing this here is that I’m seeing this tendency more and more on airline and travel blogs, as well as other media outlets covering a variety of issues and concerns. Our discourse seems to be getting more coarse and unpleasant (to use mild terms) as the country is getting more and more polarized, and it bothers me.

    My bottom line is this: All of the world’s air carriers are doing the best they can to anticipate future demand and adjust to the unpredictable situation we’re facing both in the air and on the ground. But no one knows what the future will bring. So I’m inclined to cut all of them more than a bit of slack.

    No one’s perfect.

  6. The Globe also made official what we all knew: BOS-LHR isn’t happening until. the start of the summer (2022). To them, I’m not sure if that means late March or in June…when ‘summer’ really begins.

  7. Did any one else notice this, but it looks like Avelo is matching the exact same flight days as AHA!. I wonder if AHA! has contracted with the same ground services provider as Avelo and is simply saving money by having the 2 airlines operate on the same day.

    Also does any else know what is happening with Avelo N801XT? I mean I work at ACV and it hasn’t been around in awhile. Looked at plane spotters and they stated it has been parked.

  8. Regarding HAL… the November pull-downs were from the normal pre Covid schedule. It does appear that things may have been finalized for the much anticipated return of international flying. During the Covid cutbacks a very limited international schedule was flown, mostly cargo and less than daily. It seems that with the traditional mid-December holiday schedule change, Japan returns with full schedules, as does Aussie/NZ. Also seen is the seasonal addition of HNL-SEA and OGG-LAX red-eyes as previously discussed.

    Regarding AUS… indeed it appears to go 3/wk with a slight schedule change, appearing to no longer overnight the plane in AUS, leaving just a bit earlier from AUS. It also looks like the new MCO service gets a 3rd permanent frequency.

Leave a Reply to CF Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Cranky Flier