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Hello and welcome to London Air Travel’s Atlantic Update providing a weekly bulletin on developments on transatlantic travel between Europe and North America. The Atlantic Update is published every Wednesday morning at 06:00 GMT.
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American Airlines Announces New Codeshare with GOL
American Airlines has made a number of defensive moves following Delta’s acquisition of a 20% stake in LATAM and its planned departure from Oneworld on 30 April 2020.
American has announced a new reciprocal codeshare with the Brazilian airline GOL. This will cover approximately 50 flights from Brasilia, Fortaleza, Manaus, Rio de Janeiro International and Sao Paulo Guarulhos airports. This is subject to regulatory approval in Brazil and the US.
The airline has also sought to defend its position at Miami following a planned increase in capacity by Delta. American is increasing frequencies on a number of US domestic routes to Miami. These include Boston Logan, Houston, Nashville, Orlando, Raleigh-Durham and Tampa.
American will also add a second daily flight from Miami to Rio de Janeiro in the peak winter season. This will be operated with a Boeing 787-8 aircraft.
Norwegian Stays At Gatwick
In December 2019, there was considerable attention given to a preliminary slot allocation report for London Heathrow which indicated that Norwegian had been allocated slots at the airport for the summer 2020 season.
The slots were the equivalent of three weekly return flights and the timings were not particularly attractive. According to a report from One Mile At A Time Norwegian has decided to hand the slots back to Heathrow.
This is not surprising. It is simply wasn’t worth the effort setting up a separate operation at Heathrow for so few flights.
United Adds Sixth Daily Newark Flight
United has leased a daily slot pair from Lufthansa Group to add a sixth daily flight from London Heathrow to Newark for the summer season.
The additional return flight, UA905 departs Heathrow at around 09:00-09:30 and UA904 departs Newark at around 20:00-20:30 depending on the day of the week.
CMA Review of AA/BA Joint Business
Air France-KLM, Delta and Virgin Atlantic launched their combined transatlantic joint business earlier this week.
The scale of the enlarged joint business will arguably help American Airlines and BA in the Competition & Markets Authority review of their transatlantic joint business.
There was a curious twist last week when the CMA announced that it had declined a request from Virgin Atlantic to issue an interim measures direction order to American. This is presumably in connection with Heathrow slots.
It’s not exactly clear why Virgin would demand this of American when it is the much smaller player at Heathrow. However, it gives an indication of the lobbying underway behind the scenes.
Also of note this week:
Would you swim in New York’s East River? (Curbed)
HBO’s “High Maintenance” and the New TV Fantasy Of New York. “Like many representations of New York on TV, it’s loosely predicated on the notion that people who live here are inherently more interesting than people who live in, say, Milwaukee.” (New York Times)
Late post publication updates:
[Reserved for updates throughout the day]
London Air Travel’s Atlantic Update is published every Wednesday at 06:00 GMT. If you have any comments, suggestions or tips then please drop us a line at mail [@] londonairtravel.com
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