Airlines & Routes

British Airways is boosting its services between New York JFK and London by starting daily flights to Gatwick Airport beginning Monday, Oct. 27, 2008. The new flights mean that the airline will fly 62 times each week from JFK to London as the Gatwick flights will operate in addition to 55 weekly flights to Heathrow.

Pinnacle Airlines released capacity and operational results for its Pinnacle Airlines subsidiary for March 2008. Traffic increased 4.7% compared to the same period last year, while capacity 1.8%. The load factor for the month war reported at 78.3%, up 2.2 pts compared to March 2007.

Iberia reported that the load factor improved by 1.2 points, reaching 81.8%, traffic rose 1.0%, compared to the same period last year and capacity decreased slightly.

Copa Holdings, S.A and its Copa Airlines and Aero Republica operating subsidiaries, released preliminary passenger traffic statistics for March 2008: for the month of March 2008, Copa Holdings’ system-wide passenger traffic increased 12.0%, while capacity increased 10.3%. System load factor for March 2008 was 76.3%, a 1.1 pts increase when compared to March 2007.

In the first three months of 2008, Lufthansa carried a record number of passengers, continuing the positive momentum achieved last year into the current financial year. Passenger numbers rose by 5.5% to 13 million in the first quarter. During the same period, capacity increased 5.5% and traffic climbed 5.9%, lifting the passenger load factor by

United Airlines and Aer Lingus have signed an agreement to offer codeshare flights, which would expand the international destinations and frequent flyer benefits offered to customers of both carriers. The agreement between the two carriers is pending government approval and is expected to begin around November 1.

Hawaiian Airlines a subsidiary of Hawaiian Holdings announced its systemwide traffic statistics for March 2008. Hawaiian reported that system traffic declined 1.6% while capacity increased 2.1% compared to the same period last year. The load factor for March was reported at 87.7%, down 3.3 pts.

Air France/KLM reported that traffic progressed by 3.2% in March 2008 with capacity up by 4.8%. The load factor stood at 81.0% down 1.3 points compared to the same period last year. The number of passengers amounted to 6.3 million up 0.2%.

easyJet reported that traffic for the month of March 2008 increased 20.5%, while the load factor was up 3.0 pts to 87.4%.

SAS Group’s traffic increased by 1.4% during March 2008 and capacity was up by 0.9% compared to the same period in 2007. SAS Group carried 2.6 million passengers in March, down 5.5% compared to March 2007 and the load factor was up 0.4 pts to 73.2%.