TSA Screenings Hit New High
As air travel demand continues to rebound across the country, the TSA screened 1.54 million travelers at checkpoints on Sunday, a new high since a pandemic was first declared over a year ago. The number represents a 280% jump from the same day last year, and more importantly, 70% of the figure from the same day in 2019.
The 1.54 million is a 15% jump from the previous Sunday when 1.34 million were screened. The figure only includes humans and does not take animals or pets into account, nor does it include vermin that live at an airport such as the rats at LGA. The last time the TSA screening numbers exceeded yesterday’s total was March 13, 2020 when 1.7 million passengers passed through checkpoints with numbers in freefall, dropping more and more every day.
Sunday also marked 11 days in a row with a million or more passing through the checkpoint, something that hadn’t occurred since March 16 of last year.
Eurowings Plans to Spread its Wings Across Euro
Eurowings plans to expand its presence across Europe to take advantage of the pent-up demand for air travel in Europe and in its home country of Germany.
The Lufthansa subsidiary announced last week it was expanding its base at Mallorca to create more opportunities for Europeans to fly to the sun-splashed destination, but it also plans to increase other leisure destinations as the summer approaches.
Eurowings flights from Mallorca to both Birmingham and Manchester represent its first flights from the UK to a place other than Germany. It is also opening a new base at Berlin/Brandenburg with the idea of catching leisure travel into Germany from other nations. It plans to increase its summer flying to destinations all over the continent including Egypt, Greece, Italy, Morocco, Spain, Tenerife, and Turkey.
Eurowings will consolidate most of its flying through two hubs in Germany going forward – Frankfurt and Munich – with an opportunity to expand to other locations when it damn well feels like it.
New Charter Service Says Aloha
Hawaii Shuttle submitted a request to the DOT today to receive an exemption to begin operating as a charter service membership club between Kona in Hawai’i and three west coast gateway cities. It’s founder got the idea for the airline while waiting in line at a Costco last week.
The airline, should it receive permission to operate, would sell up to 400 memberships to its service which would fly from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle to Kona. It plans to operate a B737 that it already has leased in an all-first class configuration with twice-weekly service.
The members of the club would be limited to those who live in five highfalutin communities in Kona and maintain another residence in one of the three gateway cities. It plans to run the airline itself, with the exception of contracting out the daily administration of the airline (reservations, finance, member relations), and contracting with Kaiser Air to do the flying and maintenance. But other than the day-to-day operations, finance and flying, it’ll do everything itself. Someone does have to paint the plane after all.
The airline will be funded by membership fees – if the fees are not enough to cover expenses, members will be required to pony up the difference. If the fees are more than enough to cover the operation, pigs will be flying, and the excess cash will be returned – but first the airline will have to outsource someone to do write the checks.
Alaska Hires New COO
Alaska Airlines announced its hiring of Costance von Muehlen as its next COO. Von Muehlen will officially move into her role on April 3 replacing the retiring Gary Beck.
Von Muehlen will be the first COO of Alaska Airlines, but not the first within Alaska Air Group as she herself was COO of Alaska’s regional airline Horizon from 2018-19. She says her first 90 days will be focused on the people of Alaska, both frontline employees and passengers. It will be her job develop the potion each passenger will be injected with upon boarding Alaska’s aircraft that keeps them from booking any flight on Delta.
Before joining Alaska in 2011, van Muehlen spent 20 years in aviation maintenance which is a really long time to work on an airplane, it must have been very broken. In those 20 years, she served as GM of Pratt & Whitney’s Canada service center and as Director of Airframe Maintenance at Air Canada. The AC role being particularly important for the airline and its image and it was her job to ensure that the maple leaf planted on the fuselage of each airplane was always looking bright and sharp.
New Haven Eyes to Add Service
New Haven, CT Airport (HVN) is located approximately 80 miles outside of New York City and is one of only two commercial airports in Connecticut, along with Hartford. The airport currently has scheduled passenger service to Philadelphia on American Eagle and seasonal flights to Nantucket on Cape Air but no more. The airport is trying to increase its number of airlines and cities served, turning its attention to startup airlines.
The airport has turned to the federal government’s Small City Airport Service Development Program which is thankfully abbreviated down to SCASDP. It requested $800,000 from the SCASDP to incentivize two new airlines to fly to the airport: Avelo and Breeze.
Avelo is in the process of hiring staff to begin operating and was kind enough to include a letter of support in New Haven’s SCASDP application. Avelo said that the airport fits well with its strategy of flying into secondary airports of major metropolitan destinations and that its executive staff are all big fans of New Haven pizza.
Breeze wouldn’t go as far as to include a letter of recommendation like it did for Northwest Arkansas Airport last week, but with its maintenance base nearby on Long Island, the airport would seem to be a logical choice. The airline did not comment on the record about whether or not its staff enjoys a slice of New Haven pizza.
Airline Potpourri
- Aeromar will begin operating to a second Mexican city from McAllen, TX (MFE), as it begins twice-weekly service to Monterrey on April 22.
- Air Baltic and Ukraine International announced an extension of their codeshare agreement.
- American Airlines is testing touchless check-in at its Dallas/Ft. Worth hub.
- Austrian is resuming regular operations to both London/Heathrow and Tel Aviv. It will fly to Heathrow twice daily with daily service to Tel Aviv.
- British Airways now plans to operate its daily flight to Accra (ACC) from London/Gatwick on October. It has announced plans to move it to Gatwick only to reverse course and keep it at Heathrow several times now. Just show up where it says on the ticket.
- China Airlines final B747-400 flew its last passenger flight on Saturday.
- Delta announced several new outdoorsy destinations. Visit today’s post at crankyflier.com for more.
- Eastern Airlines, presumably not the British one, will begin new nonstop service from Miami to Montevideo (MVD) this June.
- Icelandair plans to resume its seasonal service to Portland, OR. The flight will operate 3x-weekly beginning July 2.
- JetBlue has announced a $650 million convertible senior notes offering. If you understand what that means, then feel free to participate.
- Rex is no longer ending service to five leisure routes at the end if March thanks to further funding from the Australian federal government.
- Virgin Australia is reopening its meeting facilities at Melbourne, Canberra, and Perth Airports.
Andrew’s Moment of Levity
I used to hate the hokey pokey but I really turned myself around.