Article from BTNews 24 APRIL 2017
Emirates cuts US services
A fall in demand for travel to the US has led Emirates to cut services to five cities – Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Orlando and Seattle – with Fort Lauderdale dropping from daily service to five a week from 1 May and Orlando also decreasing to five a week from 23 May.
From 1 and 2 June respectively, Seattle and Boston operations move from twice-daily to once daily, with a similar reduction on the Los Angeles route from 1 July.
An Emirates statement said: “This is a commercial decision in response to weakened demand … over the past three months, we have seen a significant deterioration in the booking profiles on all our US routes, across all travel segments.
“Emirates has therefore responded as any profit-oriented enterprise would, and we will redeploy capacity to serve demand on other routes on our global network.”
The airline said it would continue to serve its 12 American gateways of Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Los Angeles, New York JFK and Newark, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC, with 101 flight departures per week.
Etihad Airways meanwhile says it is not planning any changes to its US services, saying there had been “no significant change in demand”.
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