In other international route news, Delta on May 8 plans to resume daily service from Los Angeles International to Paris CDG following a long suspension of that route due to the pandemic. Delta also plans to revive a suspended German route on May 9: Atlanta to Dusseldorf, with three weekly flights. At United’s Newark hub, its Star Alliance partner SAS this week added two new Scandinavian routes, to Aalborg, Denmark, and to Gothenburg, Sweden, both operating three days a week using 157-seat long-range Airbus A321s — a single-aisle aircraft that makes lower-volume routes like these economically possible.

Low-cost Breeze Airways wants to go international. The company has filed with the U.S. Transportation Department for authority to begin service to Mexico, with plans to launch its first transborder route in November, between Los Angeles and Los Cabos Airport — but with only one flight a week. As the One Mile at a Time blog’s Ben Schlappig notes, that might be a tough sell considering that route is already served with one or more flights a day by American, Alaska, Delta, Spirit, JetBlue and United. Meanwhile, Delta has reportedly dropped plans to begin transpacific service from Portland to Seoul, which had been slated to start Oct. 28.

In Bay Area domestic route news, Spirit Airlines this week introduced new daily service between Oakland International and Dallas/Fort Worth, which airport officials have called “one of OAK’s largest unserved markets.” The flight departs OAK at 5:48 p.m. Spirit also started daily Oakland-Philadelphia nonstops with an eastbound 9:10 a.m. departure. At Sacramento International, American Airlines has just launched daily service to Austin’s fast-growing Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, a route also served by Southwest. On May 10, Frontier Airlines is set to begin daily seasonal service from San Francisco International to Orlando — one of four new routes the airline expects to add at SFO in May and June, along with Chicago Midway, Detroit and Cleveland.

In other California route news, Frontier Airlines is due to begin new service May 11 from Atlanta to San Diego and Ontario, with daily flights in both markets. And low-cost Avelo Airlines announced another new route out of Hollywood Burbank Airport, with plans to start flying to Bozeman, Montana — a gateway to Yellowstone National Park — two days a week (Mondays and Fridays) starting June 28. Elsewhere, JetBlue this week introduced its latest challenge to rival Delta on the East Coast by launching service between New York LaGuardia and Atlanta with four flights a day. And Frontier has kicked off a big expansion of service to Puerto Rico, introducing new routes this week to San Juan from Cleveland, Baltimore/Washington, Chicago Midway, Dallas/Fort Worth and Detroit, along with service from Tampa to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and from Orlando to Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Want to visit the idyllic San Juan Islands off the northwest coast of Washington State? Alaska Airlines said it has partnered with a small regional carrier called Kenmore Air to provide easy interline connections (bookable on alaskaair.com) to the islands through Paine Field-Snohomish County Airport in Everett, Washington, just north of metro Seattle. Kenmore flies Cessna Caravan turboprops from there to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island and to Eastsound on Orcas Island. Alaska has five daily flights from San Francisco International to Paine Field, and the connecting flights on Kenmore earn credit in Alaska’s Mileage Plan program. 

Speaking of Alaska Airlines, that carrier is reportedly targeting Oct. 1 as the date when it will remove the last Airbus planes from its fleet. The carrier took on dozens of Airbus single-aisle A319s, A320s, and A321neos after its Virgin America acquisition in 2016 and has planned for a long time to get rid of them and go back to being an all-Boeing airline. That process has been proceeding gradually for the past few years and is about to reach completion. After that, Alaska’s mainline fleet will have all Boeing 737s. According to Aeroroutes, the final Alaska Airbus flights out of San Francisco will be to Los Angeles and to Washington Dulles on Sept. 5, and the final Airbus flights systemwide will be from Los Angeles to Seattle and Newark on Sept. 30.

Frontier Airlines has once again tweaked its GoWild All-You-Can-Fly Pass promotion, cutting the price of a Summer Pass this week to $499 per person “through May 31 or while supplies last.” The company said the “retail price” of the Summer Pass is $999. That pass is good for unlimited travel anywhere Frontier flies through Sept. 30, subject to certain restrictions. The airline also rolled out a short-term early booking offer for holders of both its Summer Pass and Annual Pass (which costs $1,999 and is good for travel through May 2, 2024): “Pass holders can visit FlyFrontier.com between now and May 16 to book flights for travel through June 8 without the standard advance reservation window of one day prior to departure for domestic travel and 10 days prior to departure for international travel,” Frontier said.

American Airlines pilots this week voted to authorize a strike, and the Southwest Airlines pilots’ union has started to take a similar vote among its members. Consumers who see headlines about pilot strike votes may be concerned that a sudden union walkout could devastate their summer vacation plans, and the sight of pilots walking a picket line at major airports — which they often do for “informational” purposes — can deepen those concerns. But strike votes and picket lines do not mean a strike is imminent — or even likely. Unions that are engaged in contract talks with airlines will often vote to authorize a strike to gain negotiating leverage, and pilots already have plenty of that this year because of an industrywide shortage of workers with their highly demanding skill sets. 

Most contract negotiations are ultimately settled without any kind of job action, even after union members vote to authorize a strike (which they normally approve by a wide margin). Southwest management noted in a statement this week that several airline unions have authorized strikes in the past year. “The call for a vote is not an indication of a pending work stoppage or a disruption to Southwest’s scheduled service,” the company said. Under federal law, before pilots can strike they and the airline’s management must submit to negotiations overseen by the National Mediation Board. If those talks fail, the federal government can step in and order both sides to go through a 30-day “cooling off” period before any strike can begin. 

Have you ever used Twitter to contact an airline for fast help in resolving a customer service issue? Millions of travelers have done so over the past decade or so, but there were ominous signs this week that airlines might turn away from the popular Twitter channel after some internal changes following its takeover by uber-billionaire Elon Musk. Both Air France and KLM advised their customers (through a tweet, ironically) that they would no longer handle customer inquiries sent via Twitter direct messaging. Both airlines cited recent “changes in Twitter’s terms and conditions” for their decision, and noted that their other customer contact channels, including other social media options like Facebook, are not affected.

According to the travel news website Skift, an Air France official said the problem is with Twitter’s revised pricing for accessing its application programming interfaces, or APIs, aimed at corporations that are heavy users of the service. The changes have reportedly increased costs for some corporate customers by thousands of dollars a month, forcing them to reevaluate their need for the service. The New York Post reported that the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates subways and buses, has stopped using Twitter for customer service alerts due to the pricing changes. (After that report came out, however, Twitter said that it would still allow verified government or publicly owned services to send out weather alerts and transportation updates for free, according to the Washington Post.)

In the latest step to modernize its airport operations, the Transportation Security Administration announced it will spend up to $128 million on second-generation Credential Authentication Technology (CAT-2) systems, to be installed at airport checkpoints. The vendor is Idemia Identity and Security USA. “These systems substantially improve identity verification, validate the authenticity of a passenger’s identification credential, confirm pre-screening status and validate flight reservations,” TSA said in a statement. “The second generation CAT-2 systems allow for automated identity verification with an integrated camera for biometric and self-service capabilities. This new contract with Idemia will enable TSA to test, manufacture, procure and deploy over 1,500 new CAT-2 systems to airport security checkpoints nationwide.” The CAT-2 systems were most recently installed at Baltimore-Washington Airport, where 36 of the units are in use. The system uses cameras to capture real-time images of passengers and match it to the photo on their ID, cutting down on fraudulent documentation and speeding up the screening process. It also confirms the passenger’s ticketed flight data.

Starting May 12, non-U.S. residents flying into the country will no longer have to show proof of COVID-19 vaccinations, the White House announced. That’s the same date when the U.S. officially ends its declaration of a coronavirus public health emergency. In the 2-year-old mandate’s final days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only requires travelers to have a single dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine to meet the testing requirement. “Since January 2021, COVID-19 deaths have declined by 95%, and hospitalizations are down nearly 91%,” the White House said. “Globally, COVID-19 deaths are at their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic. Following a whole-of-government effort that led to a record number of nearly 270 million Americans receiving at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, we are in a different phase of our response to COVID-19 than we were when many of these requirements were put into place.”