Some modifications to Air Italy’s network for the 2019 - 2020 schedule and a number of new flights to the Caribbean lead this week’s air travel news.
This week Air Italy opened bookings for its winter 2019 - 2020 schedule, which includes the end of seasonal transatlantic flights from two cities in the United States and one in Canada: Los Angeles, San Francisco and Toronto.
The new schedule will instead add a number of new destinations for Air Italy -- the Maldives, Zanzibar, Tenerife and Mombasa -- in addition to the airline’s existing routes to African destinations Cairo, Dakar, Accra, Lagos, and Sharm El-Sheikh. In North America, the airline will continue flying to New York and Miami, and the season will also see it fly to Fort De France with a charter service.
"As has been demonstrated repeatedly, Italy’s outbound winter traffic is traditionally beach-focused, with skiing holidays being predominantly taken domestically, hence our planned schedule for counter-seasonal flights to the Maldives, Mombasa, Tenerife, Zanzibar and Fort De France matches our home market demands," the airline said in a statement provided to Travel Agent. "Air Italy currently has 13 aircraft and so it is important to optimize our network to match seasonal requirements while focusing on serving our core domestic and international destinations such as Rome, Naples, New York and Miami."
The winter 2019 - 2020 season will also see Air Italy offer more convenient connections via its Milan hub to Rome, Naples, Palermo, Catania, Lamezia Terme and Cagliari. Aircraft will be stationed in domestic outstations overnight to allow for early morning flights into Milan, providing better timing both for travel to Milan as well as onward travel, the airline said.
Meanwhile in the Caribbean, Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI) and JetBlue announced plans to expand the airline’s existing seasonal Saturday service out of Newark to year-round service, starting May 4, providing more convenient access to the destination for travelers from New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The move will complement service from three of JetBlue’s other four focus cities to Barbados, New York - JFK, Boston and Fort Lauderdale.
Also this week, U.S. Virgin Islands Tourism Commissioner Designee Joseph Boschulte announced that United Airlines is preparing to launch daily nonstop flights between Houston and St. Thomas this summer, and that it would also consider plans for new and additional flights to the island, as well as fellow USVI island St. Croix, next summer. Additionally, Boschulte said that American Airlines is considering adding capacity out of Chicago, Dallas and Miami, as well as potentially growing airlift out of its Charlotte hub in the future.
Finally, St. Lucia announced that American is resuming a second daily nonstop flight to the destination from Miami on June 6. Departing Miami at 8:45 a.m. and arriving in St. Lucia at 11:21 a.m., the new flight will give travelers a full day to enjoy their arrival, tourism officials said.
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