Welcome to my 90th weekly routes newsletter! I've covered a subjectively exciting routes that took off recently. Why not and receive my newsletter in your email inbox every week? In addition to various seasonal routes that have recently resumed for the summer, has inaugurated two new offerings. On June 22nd, it started Dubai to Olbia, Sardinia, followed two days later by Corfu. Olbia has three weekly flights and Corfu two, each using . Obviously, both are summer-only and will revolve around connecting passengers over Dubai, supplemented by the low existing point-to-point traffic. Corfu is one of three flydubai destinations in Greece, alongside Mykonos and Santorini. As you would expect, Emirates serves Athens. Of destinations no longer served, there's only one: Thessaloniki. It was briefly served by flydubai in summer 2018. The launch of Olbia means flydubai serves five destinations in
Italy, joining Catania, Milan Bergamo, Naples, and Pisa. It rises to nine when partner Emirates is included, with Bologna, Milan Malpensa, Rome Fiumicino, and Venice Marco Polo added. . Iceland's inaugurated Keflavik to Hamilton, ~52 miles (83 km) from
Toronto but closer to Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and some sizable Ontario cities. Launched on June 22nd, Hamilton is served instead of Toronto Pearson. It offers much lower charges, is far less congested, and undoubtedly has great incentives. It will help to offset the lower yields. Using the A320neo, . The carrier's arrival means that Hamilton again has Europe flights after Norwegian ended
Dublin in 2019. PLAY now serves five North
American airports: Boston, Stewart, Baltimore, Dulles, and Hamilton. All are timed to maximize two-way connectivity across wider Europe. The carrier has not yet announced additional destinations, but expect that to change in the coming months. . For the first time, the El Salvadorian capital now has not one but two airlines to Spain's capital. It is thanks to , San Salvador's largest carrier, which commenced a three-weekly, summer-seasonal service on June 20th. The last flight back is on September 21st. Using a wet-leased A330-200 from Wamos Air, AV300 departs Central America at 23:10 and arrives at 18:10 (+1) local. Returning, AV301 leaves at 01:40 and arrives home at 05:00. It competes directly with six-weekly Madrid-Guatemala City-San Salvador-Madrid triangular service, which also uses the A330-200. It rises to daily in August. . They say things come in threes. The Maldives' capital, Malé, welcomed on June 20th, the second carrier operating from Riyadh. Running three weekly, it uses 174-seat A320neos. Its first flight had just 96 passengers, a low 55% seat load factor. Three days later, Batik Air
Malaysia inaugurated its first non-stop Kuala Lumpur-Maldives flight, replacing its one-stop via Colombo that started in May 2023. Operating six weekly, 162-seat 737 MAX 8s are deployed. The next day, Oman's flag carrier relaunched Muscat to Malé, less than two months after fellow Omani carrier SalamAir ended it. Last served in April 2020, it uses the 737 MAX 8 on its four weekly services. . On June 19th, took off from . Some 4,277 miles (6,884 km) apart, it is the fourth carrier on the airport pair and the fifth when Newark is included. When combined, there are now 11 peak summer flights – a record. Running daily, Norse's summer-seasonal route leaves Rome at 18:55 and arrives at JFK at 22:30. Returning, it departs at 00:30 and returns at 15:15. It uses the . Norse replaces Norwegian on the route. Norwegian flew Rome-Newark between November 2017 and October 2019 before switching to JFK, which ended in March 2020. It carried 378,856 passengers but did poorly for loads factors in winter – hence Norse's summer focus. . That's it for the 90th edition of my routes newsletter. to get something like this in your inbox each week.