Breeze Inaugural Flight was a Breeze
Breeze Airways became an actual airline that flies airplanes with people in them today when Breeze Flight 1 operated from Tampa to Charleston, SC before continuing to Hartford.
The inaugural flight departed Tampa this morning at 10:44 am ET and arrived in Charleston at 11:50 am. By all accounts, the plane arrived on time and in one piece, which is generally what people want from their airline on short hops.
Breeze will continue acquiring airplanes this summer, with plans to reach 13 leased aircraft – ten E190s and three E195s – before further fleet expansion. Breeze’s E190s aircraft seat 108 people and its E195s seat 118.
Today’s flight touched two of the airline’s four initial planned bases in Charleston and Tampa. The other two are New Orleans and Norfolk.
Belavia Cancels Flights to Eight Countries
Life just isn’t fair. You hijack one plane with fighter jets and illegally force it to land so you can take a journalist and his girlfriend into custody while endangering the lives of 126 innocent passengers and all of a sudden you’re a pariah in the international aviation community.
Due to this injustice, Belavia, the state-owned flag carrier of Belarus canceled flights to 12 destinations in eight European countries through October 30. The European Union revoked Belavia’s landing privileges on Monday and will not permit the airline – or any other Belarusian airline – to use EU airspace for the indefinite future.
Despite the ban, Belavia Flight 869 to Barcelona took off from Minsk with 54 people on-board yesterday. Barcelona is in Spain, which is in the European Union. To get to Spain, the plane would have to fly through the airspace of other countries, like France, that are in the European Union.
As the plane approached Polish airspace on its journey towards Spain, French ATC would not allow the plane to continue its journey over French airspace. The plane proceeded to circle in a holding pattern on the Belarus/Poland border for nearly two hours before returning to Minsk, completing a 2-hour, 28-minute flight to nowhere. The only positive for the passengers was that the plane was catered for the return flight as well, so at least there was a feast of honey roasted peanuts and flat Diet Sprite.
Spirit of St. Louis Grows, Louisville Too
Today is a big day for Spirit as it begins flying from two new midwestern cities – Louisville and St. Louis. The airline is celebrating by announcing new destinations from the pair to begin this fall.
From St. Louis, Spirit is adding four new destinations to make nine total cities for the airline. Beginning November 17, Spirit will serve Fort Myers, Phoenix, and Tampa with daily flights from St. Louis. The airline will then add Cancun into the mix on December 22, also with daily flights.
Louisville is getting two new destinations – Fort Myers begins on November 17 with 4x-weekly flights and Tampa begins November 18 with 3x-weekly service. Spirit is flying to five cities from Louisville this summer (four at launch today and one more next month), which will leave it with seven total. Spirit will see competition on the Louisville-Tampa route from Southwest and Breeze. The city pair is one of Breeze’s launch routes, with the airline flying its first SDF-TPA flight tomorrow, May 28.
To purchase tickets on the new routes, customers will be responsible for Spirit’s $19 new destination fee. Flights to Florida on Spirit all come with a $29 Spirit Sunshine Fee to cover legal costs for whichever passengers inevitably end up in a physical altercation in the gate area or on the aircraft.
Belize it or Not: Alaska Expands in Central America
Alaska Airlines will begin flying to Belize this fall, with tickets on sale for the new flights today, a little earlier than expected.
The airline will serve Belize City (BZE) the capital of Belize, from both Los Angeles and Seattle with seasonal service beginning November 19 – just in time to escape to the beaches of Belize to avoid your family around the holidays.
Alaska will operate from BZE to Los Angeles with 4x-weekly service and to Seattle with twice weekly flights. Both seasonal routes will operate through May 24, 2022.
We’re Back: Norwegian Emerges from Bankruptcy Protection
Norwegian Air Shuttle officially emerged from bankruptcy protection today with a smaller fleet, most of its debt wiped out, and dozens of bankruptcy lawyers with no idea how to spend their time going forward.
The airline obtained approval in an Oslo Bankruptcy Court for its reconstruction plan last month and has used the time since then to put the plan into action. Mostly this consisted having a giant bonfire celebration with their bills and notices from creditors as kindling while using the warmth from the bonfire to heat their headquarters in Oslo since the electric company cut them off months ago.
The carrier gained the confidence of its creditors in April when the plan was approved, because the creditors realized they didn’t have any other choice. The airline posted a $2 billion loss for FY 2020 which it blames on the pandemic and not its own gross mismanagement.
Norwegian canceled aircraft orders worth $10 billion to reduce its debt to about $2 billion and is now hoping to recall over 1,000 of its furloughed employees at London/Gatwick. As soon as they’re back to work, the airline will begin prepping for its next bankruptcy filing which is expected sometime in mid-2022.
- Air New Zealand will operate 30 weekly cargo flights to 13 international destinations through at least October.
- Air Astana is resuming flights between Atyrau and Amsterdam with weekly flights beginning June 3.
- Air France cancelled its Paris-Moscow flight on Wednesday after Russia declined to approve a new route that would have taken the flight through Russian airspace to bypass flying over Belarus.
- DHL is creating a new cargo airline that will be based in Austria. The airline plans to use Boeing 757 freighter aircraft on intra-European cargo services as soon as it can locate them.
- flydubai is beginning flights from its Dubai hub to Sharm El Sheikh (SSH). SSH will be the airline’s second destination in Egypt and will see three weekly flights beginning June 15.
- JetBlue is resuming service to Worcester, MA (ORH), returning commercial service to the airport for the first time since September. It will operate daily flights to JFK beginning August 19. In October it will increase to twice-daily to JFK and then JetBlue will add daily flights to Fort Lauderdale on October 21. Some flights may actually have paying customers onboard.
- KLM is adding six new destinations this winter including Mombasa (MBA), Orlando, Cancun, Bridgetown (BGI), Port of Spain (POS) and Phuket (HKT). The Orlando route will operate as a triangle route with KLM’s existing flight to Miami.
- Loganair is beginning 5x-weekly flights between Edinburgh and Cardiff from August 2.
- Qatar will no longer be Boeing’s launch customer for the B777X.
- Ryanair, easyJet, and Volotea have been fined a combined $10.5 million by Italy’s competition watchdog authority for flouting consumer protection laws during the pandemic. The airlines were told to make their checks out to ITA.
- United has named Ted (this one, not this one) Philip as the non-executive chairman of its board of directors.
Archaeologists make the best friends. The older you get, the more interested they are in learning about you.