unaligned

When the Obama administration announced an agreement last year to allow regularly scheduled flights into Cuba for the first time in more than 50 years, major US airlines stumbled over each other to get access to the island nation. But now JetBlue says it is reducing its service to Cuba, becoming the second US carrier to cut back. In December, American Airlines said it would drop one of the two daily flights between Miami and the cities of Holguin, Santa Clara and Varadero. The company cited weak demand in reducing its schedule to 10 daily round-trip flights from 13, starting in mid-February. As of May 3, New York-based JetBlue will fly aircraft with fewer seats to Havana, Santa Clara, Camaguey and Holguin. In total, JetBlue will fly 300 fewer seats a day to the Cuban destinations. JetBlue would not attribute the cut in capacity to a decline in demand. “It’s common practice to adjust schedules and … routes based on customer preferences, especially routes that are new to the network,” said JetBlue spokesman Philip Stewart. Meanwhile, Alaska Airlines, which flies to Cuba from Los Angeles, said it has not cut capacity or routes to Cuba. <br/>

Ryanair is closing in on a series of agreements that could see the discount giant take control of an even bigger swathe of European short-haul travel. The Dublin-based company is seeking deals with carriers including Norwegian Air Shuttle, Aer Lingus, Alitalia and Lufthansa under which its flights would help feed passengers onto their long-haul services. Ryanair would be open to adding frequencies in order to provide sufficient connectivity and could ultimately replace many short-haul services operated by network carriers, encouraging them to focus exclusively on intercontinental routes, CEO Michael O’Leary said. “The upside for us is in persuading the legacy carriers to stop trying to compete with us on short-haul because it feeds their long-haul,” he said. “Work with us on short haul, you lose less money, I’ll have less competition.” Ryanair is seeking to seal accords in time for its summer timetable, with the arrangements likely to see passengers book flights to their end destination via the long-haul carriers’ websites, but fly European sectors on the Irish company’s jets. Baggage would be transferred automatically, though the agreements are likely to stop short of code-share terms, in which airlines sell tickets on each other’s flights as if they were their own. “There’s nothing but upside for the legacy carriers in this, except you’ve got to persuade them it’s not some scam,” O’Leary said. O’Leary cites Aer Lingus’s short-haul business in Dublin to illustrate how the feeder plan would work. The carriers compete directly on 28 services, he said, and while Ryanair wouldn’t seek to take over “trunk routes” a deal would allow the IAG unit to forgo unprofitable peripheral operations while connecting to the 85 destinations offered by its discount rival, including Birmingham and Edinburgh.<br/>

The founder of Nigeria's largest airline Arik Air, placed in receivership earlier this week, accused the government of seizing Arik to meet a political goal of creating a "national carrier" and said he would challenge the move in court. State-owned "bad bank" AMCON said Thursday the move arose from Arik's inability to pay workers and creditors. Arik is West Africa's biggest airline by passenger numbers but has been hard hit by Nigeria's currency crisis as its customers are invoiced in naira but fuel suppliers are paid in dollars. Arik founder Michael Arumemi-Ikhide said he believed the government staged the move after a team travelled overseas in search of partners but were turned down and advised to work with the decade-old Arik. "This (takeover) was designed by the government. Ever since this government came into power there has been the ambition to have a national carrier," Arumeni-Ikhide said. "We are going to challenge the forceful takeover in court. By earlier next week we will be filing the case." <br/>

Asian budget carrier AirAsia X announced its first-ever route to the US on Friday. The airline – the long-haul unit of Malaysian low-cost carrier AirAsia – will begin flying from Honolulu on June 28. AirAsia X will fly non-stop from Honolulu to Osaka/Kansai, Japan, with continuing service to its main hub in Kuala Lumpur. Passengers traveling between Honolulu and Kuala Lumpur will have a stopover in Osaka of about two hours. Introductory fares on the new route were on sale for as little as $99 one way to Japan and $149 to Malaysia, though regular fares will be higher. AirAsia X’s Honolulu-Oaska-Kuala Lumpur service will operate four times a week on 377-seat Airbus A330-300 widebody jets. The planes include 12 lie-flat seats and 365 economy seats. Fares for the flatbed seats begin at $699 one way during the introductory period, though typical fares will be higher. The carrier’s first route to America comes little more than two weeks after the company revealed it had gained approval from the FAA to begin US flights.<br/>

Pilots flew a GoJet plane bound for North Carolina back to Boston after they smelled smoke in the cockpit, an ABC-affiliated TV channel in Boston reported on Saturday. The Delta Airlines 6266 connection flight bound for Raleigh-Durham International Airport with 76 passengers and 4 crew members aboard landed safely in Boston, WCVB.com reported. The news channel reported that the pilot had said over the radio, "We actually have smoke in the cabin. Declaring an emergency and coming back to the airport." A Delta spokesperson told the station that the pilot asked that the passengers get out of the plane on the tarmac and that they were then taken by bus to the terminal, rather than taxiing to an airport gate in the plane.<br/>

An Aerolineas Argentinas flight bound for Buenos Aires cancelled takeoff from New York's JFK airport Thursday night after one of its engines stalled, the state-run airline said Friday. The company also said there was no fire, as had been earlier reported. No passengers were injured and the plane, an Airbus A330-200, returned to its gate without incident, the statement read. Aerolineas spokeswoman Felicitas Castrillon had earlier told Argentine television channel TN that the engine was being repaired and that there was no damage to the aircraft. She had said the incident was caused by a "turbine failure" and that the plane would be ready to fly again in three to five days. Castrillon later said the engine that stalled was manufactured by Pratt & Whitney Co. The pilot of Aerolineas flight 1301 had reported a small engine fire as the plane taxied to its runway but responding rescue workers found no fire, New York-based PIX11 News reported on its website. Passengers aboard the plane posted images on social media showing flames in one of the engines. The company said in the statement that "it is important to clarify that there was not any fire."<br/>