Belgian long haul airline City Bird will operate a weekly flight linking Brussels and Point-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, from 30 October-29 April next year, under an agreement with tour operator Nouvelles Frontières. The agreement strengthens collaboration with Nouvelles Frontières on City Bird routes to the USA. Crossair will start a midday service between Euroairport Basle-Mulhouse-Freiburg and Rome Fiumicino from July. Trans World Airlines and Royal Air Maroc are increasing their links by offering joint bookings from any city in TWA's network to Tangiers and Marrakesh, Morocco. TWA plans to expand the codeshare to add flights to Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Air Lanka's route network is being reviewed, following the acquisition of 40% of its shares by Emirates. The Sri Lankan flag carrier will also undergo a relaunch, managed by an Emirates team, in November, with the arrival of the first of nine Airbus Industrie A330-300s. Services to Amsterdam, Fukuoka and Jeddah have been suspended indefinitely. Non-stop Colombo-Sydney services and a Colombo-Dubai-Stockholm codeshare with Emirates will start in November. The intention is to develop Colombo into a major hub for flights from the Middle East and Europe to the Asia Pacific and Australasian region. British Midland will announce a US codeshare partner by October for the launch early next year of its London Heathrow-USA schedule, chairman Michael Bishop says, conceding that BM's brand name is well established in Europe but unknown in the USA. US start-up carrier Cardinal Airlines has filed for first class-only scheduled and foreign charter combination services. Based at Melbourne, Florida, Cardinal wants to set up schedules to the main eastern USA destinations, starting with Baltimore/ Washington International and New York, using two Boeing MD-80s. Cardinal says large seats and first-class catering will be on offer for the equivalent of its competitors' tourist class fares.
Source: Flight International
