Routes: New $100 nonstop routes coming to SFO for the summer

The business-class regional carrier JSX is set to resume intrastate seasonal service on April 6 between Monterey and Santa Ana’s Orange County Airport with small-jet flights on Thursdays, Fridays, Sundays and Mondays. The Points Guy reports that United is planning to drop two more small cities from its network: Springfield, Illinois, on May 31 and Erie, Pennsylvania, on June 1. Both are served from Chicago O’Hare by United Express/SkyWest. It notes that American is due to add Chicago-Springfield service June 1 and that it already has Erie flights from its Charlotte hub.

Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network is the latest provider to bring in-flight internet service to the airline industry, and it is rolling out on two U.S. carriers — at no cost to users.

Hawaiian Airlines does not currently offer in-flight Wi-Fi, but passengers should soon be able to access the internet if they’re on one of the airline’s Airbus A321neos. A company spokesperson tells us that Hawaiian will begin to offer free high-speed Starlink Wi-Fi this summer on the A321s, “with additional connectivity capabilities coming this fall across the airline’s wide-body aircraft.” With the high-speed link, passengers will be able to stream content, play live games with friends on the ground, collaborate on work projects in real time, and post those Instagram photos from their island trips. “Connecting to the internet will be seamless when guests walk on board, without registration pages or payment portals,” the spokesperson said.

Hawaiian will be the second U.S. airline to offer free Starlink satellite Wi-Fi. The first is the regional carrier JSX, which recently started offering the service on its 30-passenger jets. A few weeks ago, The Points Guy reporter Zach Graff conducted a series of technical tests of Starlink on a JSX flight and came away quite impressed. He connected four separate devices to the Starlink service and found the connections were “outstanding.” “Each device measured download speeds in excess of 100 Mbps. Upload speeds, which hovered between five and 20 Mbps, were just as impressive,” he wrote. “But the real show-stopper was the ping, a measure that generally indicates how much buffering you’ll experience during data-intensive tasks. The ping clocked in between 28 and 150 milliseconds in the four tests — an incredible feat for inflight Wi-Fi. Just by the measure of these speeds alone, I could quickly tell that this would be my fastest inflight experience ever.” 

Air India, suffering from a shortage of Boeing 777 pilots, is trimming its U.S. schedules until it can staff up. The airline’s San Francisco-Delhi service has been reduced from 10 flights a week to seven from now through June 30, while its New York JFK-Mumbai schedule will be trimmed from daily service to four flights a week during the month of May, and Newark-Delhi service has been suspended from now through May 1. “Several Air India flights to North America have been canceled or delayed in the last few months,” Simple Flying said. “And all of it was primarily due to a crew shortage, ranging from an inadequate number of pilots or delays in the U.S. visas for flight attendants. In February, Air India had to cancel some flights to San Francisco and at least one to Vancouver. Many of the flights that were able to operate to North America faced delays of around 10-12 hours.”

In other international route news, Finnair this week resumed summer seasonal service to Helsinki from Chicago O’Hare with four weekly flights and from Seattle with three. Finnair already flies year-round from Los Angeles, New York JFK and Dallas-Fort Worth. Delta has resumed nonstop service from its Minneapolis-St. Paul hub to Tokyo Haneda after a three-year suspension of the route. Last year, American Airlines had to suspend some international service because Boeing was late in delivering the new 787s that the carrier was planning to use for that service, and apparently the problem is still lingering. American is suspending Philadelphia-Madrid flights during May and early June, citing the late delivery of Boeing Dreamliners.

Lufthansa, citing “strong demand” for transatlantic flights this summer, plans to bring its 509-passenger Airbus A380s back to the U.S., operating daily Boston-Munich service beginning June 1 and daily New York JFK-Munich flights starting July 4. Delta, citing routine seasonal adjustments to its network based on future demand, plans to eliminate six transatlantic routes during the 2023-2024 winter season, which begins in late October. Routes getting the axe include Atlanta to Dusseldorf and Stuttgart, Germany, along with New York JFK to Berlin, Copenhagen, Geneva and Stockholm.

American Airlines and its partner JetSmart, a low-cost Chilean carrier, have filed with the U.S. Transportation Department for approval to begin code-sharing. The partnership would put American’s AA code onto both domestic and international flights operated by JetSmart, according to Routesonline.com. That carrier flies to 23 points within Chile and to eight other countries in South America. American currently flies to JetSmart’s Santiago base from Miami and Dallas-Fort Worth; it recently suspended New York JFK-Santiago service. 

Santa Clara-based Archer Aviation has announced the second air taxi route it plans to operate for United Airlines, using Archer’s four-passenger electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL). Expected to launch in 2025, the route would carry passengers between downtown Chicago and United’s hub at Chicago O’Hare, operating from Vertiport Chicago, in the Illinois Medical District near The Loop. “From there, passengers will be able to travel to and from ORD via Archer’s Midnight aircraft in approximately 10 minutes. A similar trip by car can take upwards of an hour or more during rush hour traffic,” Archer and United said. They noted that the initial routes developed as part of their “urban mobility project” will focus on airport-to-city center transportation and will later expand to include service to surrounding communities. Last fall, the two companies said that their first eVTOL route would connect United’s Newark hub to the downtown Manhattan heliport, near Battery Park and convenient to the Wall Street financial district. The Archer eVTOLs operate at speeds of up to 150 mph with a range of up to 100 miles.

Although the number of “disruptive passenger” incidents has dropped off from its COVID-19-era peak — especially after the mask mandate ended — it’s still a lot higher than it was before the pandemic, and a bipartisan bill introduced in Congress this week would authorize the Transportation Security Administration to create its own no-fly list to ban troublesome individuals from commercial flights. Currently, unruly flyers face travel bans from the airline they were flying at the time of an incident, but there are no industrywide bans (except the FBI no-fly list, which targets people with suspected links to terrorists). A similar bill was pushed last year with the backing of airline unions, but it went nowhere. The new bill would let TSA decide how long to ban someone and would provide for an appeal process.  

If you’re planning to fly outside the U.S. this summer and you need to apply for or renew a passport, you better start the process now. The State Department warns travelers that the volume of passport applications this year is running 30% ahead of 2022 levels, so as of this week, “Routine processing will take 10-13 weeks and expedited processing, which costs an additional $60, will take 7-9 weeks,” the agency said. “These new processing times only apply to new applications submitted on or after March 24. Processing time begins the day we receive an application and do not include mailing time.” If you already have a passport, the State Department said it continues “to urge U.S. citizens to check their passport expiration date and renew now if they are planning international travel this year.” 

A federal judge in Boston has set Oct. 16 for the start of a trial in the Justice Department’s antitrust suit challenging the JetBlue-Spirit Airlines merger. The judge scheduled four weeks for the trial, which will be held without a jury. At issue in the case is whether the combination of the two carriers would heighten competition in the airline industry, as JetBlue’s lawyers contend, or diminish it, as the Justice Department claims. JetBlue is eager to get the trial and any possible appeals underway because it has set July 2024 as the deadline to complete the merger. Meanwhile, the Transportation Department has rejected an exemption request from JetBlue that would have allowed the two airlines to operate under common ownership pending the formal combination of their operating certificates. DOT cited the pending Justice Department suit as the reason for denying the exemption request.