Welcome to my 175th weekly routes article! It includes six mini-stories about subjectively exciting services that took off between July 8 and 14. While dozens of routes worldwide started in the examined period, only a selection of intriguing additions are covered in this article.
Ethiopian Airlines Arrives In Vietnam
On July 10, Ethiopian Airlines began the first passenger flight ever from Addis Ababa to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. It is the second passenger service between Africa and Vietnam, starting eight years after Kenya Airways ceased flying from Nairobi to Hanoi.
Ethiopian serves the market four times weekly via Dhaka in both directions. The 270-seat 787-8 is used. ET678 departs at 22:30 and gets to Vietnam via Bangladesh at 13:10 local time. The largest number of flight arrivals from across Africa feeds this departure.
Returning, ET679 leaves at 14:10 and gets back at 21:35. This arrival time in Addis means far fewer African connections, but they do include major cities, such as Johannesburg, Lagos, and Nairobi.
When combined with the recent launch of service to Hyderabad, Ethiopian’s Asian passenger network now consists of 20 cities. It rises to 34 when the Middle East is added, including the coming relaunch of flights to Abu Dhabi on July 15, 17 years after the UAE capital last saw its frames.
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Ethiopian Airlines now serves Vietnam, with its first passenger service to Hanoi.
United Airlines Now Flies To 2nd Taiwanese City
United Airlines now serves three Asian cities from its resurgent Tokyo Narita hub on a fifth freedom basis. This followed the July 11 launch of flights to Kaohsiung, which joins those to Cebu and Ulaanbaatar. United is the second US operator to have had flights to the Taiwanese city, following Northwest until the early 2000s.
The new service runs daily. UA837 leaves San Francisco for Narita on the 777, keeping the same flight number but switching to the 737-800 to Kaohsiung. UA838 then operates the reverse service, with the equipment swap in Japan.
Like the other routes, Kaohsiung is timed to connect to/from the carrier’s US mainland destinations from Narita: Denver, Houston Intercontinental, Los Angeles, Newark, and San Francisco. Despite this, fewer than 25,000 passengers flew between Kaohsiung and the US last year, with local traffic to/from Narita helping to fill its aircraft.
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The airline’s 737-800s now fly to Cebu, Ulaanbaatar, and Kaohsiung.
T’Way Makes Canadian Debut
Seoul is a large market from Vancouver. More than 180,000 round-trip local passengers flew between the two cities last year. It was the fourth most popular Asian market from British Columbia, with only Delhi, Hong Kong, and Tokyo having more traffic.
On July 12, the city pair welcomed its third nonstop passenger carrier: T’Way Air. This marked the South Korean budget airline’s debut in Canada and the North American mainland.
T’Way has a four-times-weekly year-round operation on the 347-seat A330-300. It faces Air Canada (daily 787-9) and Korean Air (11 weekly 787-9/787-10). As its arrival in Seoul (at 21:35) means no two-way connections are available across Asia, it’ll focus on growing the point-to-point market.
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For the first time in 16 years, Vancouver has three passenger airlines serving Seoul.
Pegasus Begins Bristol Flights
On July 8, the ultra-low-cost carrier Pegasus took off from Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen, on the Asian side of the Bosporus, to Bristol. It has three weekly flights, variously on the 737-800, A320neo, and A321neo. It’ll target the local market and connections across its ever-growing network in Türkiye, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
Until last November, Bristol had never had Istanbul flights. That changed when easyJet launched a twice-weekly service to Istanbul Airport, which runs year-round at that frequency and which revolves entirely around local traffic.
While Pegasus has UK flights from six Turkish airports, nearly all services are from Sabiha Gökçen. It serves Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, London Stansted, and Manchester from the airport, with up to 10 daily departures in total.
Air Mediterranean’s New Germany-Greece-Syria Service
The little-discussed Greek carrier Air Mediterranean uses two rare Boeing 737-400s, which average 28 years old. On July 8, flights began from Athens to Berlin (weekly), followed by Cologne the next day (weekly). They build on the start of Vienna service in late June.
There is one reason for these routes: to feed the airline’s services to/from Damascus. Air Mediterranean uses the lack of Syrian service to target key cities with high numbers of Syrian diaspora via the Greek capital. Over 290,000 Syrians live in North Rhine-Westphalia (served by Cologne, Düsseldorf, etc.), while 40,000+ live in Berlin.
Frontier & Spirit’s Domestic Additions This Week
Frontier has resumed operations between Trenton to Myrtle Beach, with a twice-weekly A320neo operation. The carrier now has four routes from the New Jersey airport for the rest of this year.
Frontier served the airport pair between 2018 and 2021, before which there were no flights. It transported 60,500 round-trip passengers but filled no more than 73% of the seats. Alas, I could not find any celebratory photos.
Photo: Tim Webster | Flickr
I also could not find any promotional materials for Spirit’s relaunch of Baltimore to Montego Bay service, after last operating between 2018 and 2022. It has up to three weekly flights, mainly on the A321neo. It competes against Southwest. Historically, Air Jamaica, AirTran, and USAir (as it was then called) served the market, none of which now exist.
