A weekly roundup of airline and airport route and service news
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Noise levels in SFO's terminals have dropped significantly.
Photo: San Francisco InternationalNoise levels in SFO's terminals have dropped significantly.
Noise levels in SFO's terminals have dropped significantly.
Noise levels in SFO's terminals have dropped significantly.
In route news, San Francisco International gets quieter; Southwest extends its open middle seat policy through Thanksgiving; American’s website adds a trip planning feature that details COVID-related restrictions on U.S. travelers to countries worldwide; New York now allows California residents to visit without subjecting them to a mandatory 14-day quarantine; Hawaii now expects to lift its mandatory quarantine rule in mid-October; new domestic routes are coming to Los Angeles International and Palm Springs; international carriers including United, Philippines, EVA and KLM trim winter schedules at SFO; Air France-KLM lounge reopens at SFO; and American Express will start reopening Centurion airport lounges next month.
The next time you visit San Francisco International, you might notice something you haven’t heard there before: silence. Airport officials said this week that an ongoing project at SFO called Quiet Airport has led to a 40% reduction in public announcements via the PA system at departure gates. “In the International Terminal alone, SFO Customer Care staff estimate that more than 90 minutes of unnecessary announcements have been eliminated each day. The team will continue to focus on reducing sources of unwanted background noise, including items such as moving walkways and escalators,” the airport said. The airport has convinced airlines in recent months to make boarding announcements only in and around the departure gate instead of all through the terminal.
Airlines continue to weigh the importance of empty middle seats to their customers, and the latest to announce a change is Southwest. The airline had previously said it would keep middle seats open through the end of October, but now it is extending that policy through Nov. 30 to accommodate Thanksgiving travelers. “Southwest has been operating flights with middle seats open throughout the summer and has added thousands of flights to in-demand destinations to provide extra seats for on-board physical distancing and added comfort," said senior VP Ryan Green. Southwest has no assigned seating but will keep open seats by limiting bookings to two-thirds of an aircraft’s capacity. Delta recently announced plans to keep middle seats empty through Jan. 6. American and United no longer enforce such a policy; Alaska’s empty middle seat guarantee is currently due to end Oct. 31 and JetBlue’s Oct. 15.
A couple of weeks ago, United Airlines came out with an interactive online on-line guide to travel restrictions in the United States to help customers plan their future trips. Now American Airlines has come out with one as well, powered by a company called Sherpa. While United’s planning tool focuses on coronavirus-related rules and restrictions in U.S. destinations, American’s currently seems to be limited to international planning. American said customers can access the new feature on aa.com’s travel updates page under the Travel Guidelines section. Just select your destination country and the site will pull up the relevant rules and restrictions. Sometimes you might have to dig a little into the details; for instance, if you call up information on the U.K. for a trip to London, you’ll see a headline that says “American travelers are allowed to visit the United Kingdom,” but if you scroll down the page and click on details for “quarantine,” you’ll see that U.S. travelers have to self-isolate for 14 days after arrival.
Want to visit the Big Apple but you’ve been putting it off because of New York’s mandatory 14-day quarantine rule for residents of select states? It’s OK to go now, because California this week was removed from the list. Since late June, the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have jointly imposed a 14-day quarantine rule on anyone visiting from a state that has unacceptably high levels of new coronavirus cases – and there were a lot of them. Also removed were Hawaii, Maryland, Ohio, Nevada and Minnesota. Even with those deletions, there are still 30 states and U.S. territories whose residents are subject to the quarantine. You can see the list here.
Speaking of quarantines, Hawaii has decided on a final date (we hope) for lifting its mandatory 14-day quarantine rule for all out-of-state visitors. But it’s not Oct. 1 as promised a few weeks ago – now it’s Oct. 15. As we reported earlier this week, the new rules will require visitors to get negative results on a coronavirus test within 72 hours of arrival in the islands, but now the state said it has lined up partnerships with CVS pharmacies and Kaiser Permanente to conduct the testing. Other partners are expected to be added, and tests are likely to cost $120-$140, officials said.
If Hawaii sticks with its new date of Oct. 15, expect to see airlines quickly reviving many of their suspended routes to the islands. Of course, they’ve been through this before since Hawaii has now delayed its plan to reopen to tourism three times (it was originally supposed to happen Aug. 1, then Sept. 1, then Oct. 1). This just happened a couple of days ago, and so far the only Hawaii route news we’ve seen this week is a plan by Hawaiian Airlines to resume Las Vegas-Honolulu flights three days a week starting Oct. 2.
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In California route news, new service is coming for Los Angeles and Palm Springs. On Dec. 19, Delta plans to kick off twice-daily Delta Connection/Skywest service from LAX to Reno with E175s. And Boutique Air, which flies Pilatus PC-12 single-engine turboprops with 1x1 leather seats and soundproofed cabins, plans to start flying out of Palm Springs on Oct. 1 with daily flights to LAX and Phoenix Sky Harbor. (On Dec. 17, Delta will also begin daily 737-800 flights between its newly built Salt Lake City hub and Miami.)
Following the current airline industry trend of focusing on more service in leisure markets, United plans to add flights to Key West, Fla. next month. The airline will revive daily flights from Chicago O’Hare and from Newark Liberty International on Oct. 1 and will introduce new service from Washington Dulles Nov. 6. The Dulles route will start with five flights a week and increase to daily frequencies Dec. 17.
The Air France-KLM lounge at SFO's International Terminal has reopened.
On the international side, we’re seeing more carriers cut back service in their winter schedules, which are in effect from late October through late March. United’s latest update indicates that the carrier now plans to offer one daily 787-9 flight instead of two between San Francisco and Shanghai Pudong during the winter. To Australia and New Zealand, United will continue to operate one daily 787-9 roundtrip from SFO to Sydney but will trim Los Angeles-Sydney service from seven flights a week to three. Still suspended this winter are United’s routes from SFO to Melbourne and Auckland, LAX to Melbourne and Houston to Sydney.
Philippine Airlines’ winter schedule calls for a reduction in SFO-Manila service from two flights a day to three a week starting Oct. 25, then back to five a week Nov. 20 and daily service effective Dec. 15. Taiwan’s EVA Air has plans to slash its SFO-Taipei schedule from 21 flights a week to just three from Oct. 25 through Dec. 14. And KLM has trimmed its SFO-Amsterdam schedule from daily service to four flights a week.
We reported earlier this week on American Airlines’ plans to open its new Admirals Club in SFO’s Harvey Milk Terminal 1 on Oct. 6 (operating at 50% capacity), but that’s not the only lounge news at the airport. In International Terminal A, the Air France-KLM lounge has reopened, the airport said in a tweet this week.
In other lounge news, American Express said this week it expects to start reopening some of its Centurion Lounges in early October (although it didn’t say which ones), and added that it should have its newest locations (at New York JFK, London Heathrow and Denver International) opened later this year. AmEx also announced plans for some major improvements to its clubs at New York LaGuardia and Las Vegas McCarran. Its LGA Centurion Lounge will be relocated to a post-security location in the rebuilt airport’s new Terminal B; it will be twice the size of the old lounge and will feature a family room, more workspaces, private telephone rooms and city skyline views. At LAS, the seven-year-old Centurion Lounge will be expanded from 9,000 to 13,400 square feet and will offer more multi-purpose areas, new private telephone rooms and new workspace areas. The work on both should be finished sometime next year.
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Chris McGinnis is SFGATE's senior travel correspondent. You can reach him via email or follow him on Twitter or Facebook. Don't miss a shred of important travel news by signing up for his FREE weekly email updates!
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Routes: Silence at SFO + Southwest middle seats, AA, New York, Hawaii, airport lounges, more - SF Gate
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