Frontier Airlines and Silver Airways are dropping air service to Cuba, saying other airlines are adding too many flights to the island nation and making the routes unprofitable. US airlines rushed to begin flights to Cuba last year after the Obama administration allowed commercial service for the first time in more than half a century. More Americans are visiting Cuba, but the glut of new flights has exceeded demand, resulting in many empty seats. Florida-based Silver said Monday that it will end Cuba service on April 22, just six months after it started flying between Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Cuban provincial capitals like Camaguey and Cienfuegos. Several of its Cuban destinations are also served by major carriers such as American Airlines. Silver spokeswoman Misty Pinson said the number of seats on planes between the US and Cuba quadrupled because the airlines added so many flights, many of them with big planes. The glut of seats has made Cuban routes unprofitable for all carriers, she said. Frontier Airlines will cancel its daily flight between Miami and Havana on June 4, said a spokesman, because of heavy competition and higher-than-expected costs of providing service at the Havana airport.<br/>
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The aggressive network expansion of Thai Lion Air (TLA) is gathering pace, with five new routes set for launch in the next several weeks. Three of the five routes are international and two are domestic. All originate from the low-cost carrier's (LCC) Don Mueang airport hub in Bangkok. The cities for new scheduled flights include Nanchang and Nanjing, both in China; Hanoi in Vietnam; and Khon Kaen and Phitsanulok, said industry insiders. These new services come on the heels of four recent route launches: Bangkok-Chongqing, Bangkok-Chengdu, Bangkok-Trang and Chiang Mai-Surat Thani. The new wave of launches will start with the debut of Bangkok-Khon Kaen on March 17 with 13 flights a week. It will be followed by the introduction of TLA's second Vietnamese route, to the capital Hanoi, on March 24 with eight flights a week. The airline is intensifying its China strategy this year with at least two new routes looming large on its radar screen. The Chinese cities of Jiangsu and Kunming are likely to be TLA's next destinations in the near future as the airline sees travel demand from secondary cities in the mainland to Thailand, one of China's top foreign destinations. <br/>
New South Korean low-cost carrier KAIR Airlines has placed a firm order for eight Airbus A320s and aims to launch operations in 2018. Airbus said KAIR will be based in Cheongju in central South Korea and will focus primarily on services to international destinations in North East Asia. “We see enormous potential for the development of a low-cost model linking central South Korea with destinations in China, Taiwan and Japan. KAIR Airlines will focus on point-to-point services at low fares while offering passengers a modern and fun product offering,” KAIR Airlines representative director and chairman Byung Ho Kang said. He added that the A320 was chosen for its low operating costs and cabin width. <br/>
After the collapse of Citywing, which sold flights on a range of UK and Isle of Man services, a senior aviation figure has demanded an end to the concept of a “virtual airline”. Citywing flights ceased on Saturday onwards after going into liquidation. It had no aircraft and employed no flight crew. Instead it sold seats on flights that were operated by another carrier. Until last month, the airline used was Van Air Europe, based in the Czech Republic. But on 23 February, the day Storm Doris swept across the British Isles, a Van Air plane was involved in what the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) calls “an incident” at Ronaldsway airport on the Isle of Man. The following day, all Van Air’s UK route licences were cancelled. It is understood the authority was concerned about decisions to attempt landings in weather below safe minima on an Isle of Man-Belfast flight. After the grounding, Citywing chartered a Danish airline, North Flying Airport Service, to shuttle between Cardiff and Valley airport in Anglesey – a heavily subsidised route connecting the far north-west of Wales with the capital. It also used Spirit Airlines on some routes to and from the Isle of Man. But after limping on for two weeks, Citywing issued a statement announcing its closure: “The company has tried to offer a service whilst suffering considerable losses but these have proved unfortunately to be commercially unsustainable.”<br/>