Airlines Plan to Add Flights to Southland
The skies over Southern California are about to get considerably more crowded.
Several airlines plan to add service to Los Angeles and other cities in the region as they cautiously gear up for the busy summer travel season. Some carriers are resuming flights canceled after Sept. 11, while others are adding new service to grab market share from rivals.
The moves illustrate how airline travel continues to gradually recover from the effect of the terrorist attacks, bolstered largely by the carriers’ constant fare sales for travelers who can book in advance. But passenger traffic remains well below year-ago levels, with business travel particularly weak.
The number of domestic passengers is expected to drop to 600 million in the year ending Sept. 30 compared with a record 695 million set two years earlier, the Federal Aviation Administration said in its annual forecast released Tuesday. Air travel won’t start growing again until next year, it added.
“There continues to be month-over-month improvement,” said Paul Haney, a spokesman for Los Angeles International Airport. “However, going into the spring we’re still down about 15% [in passenger traffic] from a year ago.”
Also, UAL Corp.’s United Airlines said Tuesday its operations will remain 16% to 17% below year-earlier levels, even though it’s adding dozens of additional flights out of its Chicago hub in June.
The increase will double LAX-Chicago flights to 16 a day from eight, returning the carrier to the same number of flights it had before Sept. 11.
United also is extending a fare sale aimed at luring more business travelers--a promotion originally set to end this month--until Sept. 30.
Meanwhile, low-fare king Southwest Airlines took aim at United and American by saying last week that it will launch service from LAX to Chicago’s Midway Airport on May 5, with three daily nonstop flights.
Southwest had avoided locking horns with United and American on that route. But Dallas-based Southwest--the only airline that didn’t cut its operations after Sept. 11--is launching the service because it’s getting additional airplanes and saw LAX-Chicago as one of the “routes that are underserved and overpriced,” said Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King.
United’s Bowers said Southwest’s action wasn’t a factor in United’s decision to restore hourly LAX-Chicago service, though he said “they keep everybody very much on their toes.”
Southwest also is adding four daily flights between John Wayne Airport and Sacramento, starting April 7.
Overall, daily flights at the Orange County airport are holding at 258--a dozen less than the 270 being logged daily before Sept. 11, said spokeswoman Ann McCarley.
American on Monday also announced plans to add nine daily round-trip flights from LAX to various cities, including three additional LAX-Chicago flights starting April 7. That will give American a total of 14 daily flights on that route.
America West Airlines said it’s adding 46 daily flights to 31 markets from its Phoenix home over the next four months, with about half of the flights representing new service. The additions include more flights to LAX, Orange County and San Diego.
JetBlue Airways, a small carrier based in New York, is launching twice-daily service from Long Beach to Dulles International Airport in Washington on May 1, with sale fares as low as $104 one-way if purchased by March 29.
