The FINANCIAL — Iberia will inaugurate this week two new routes from Europe to the U.S. Today, it has started flying between Madrid and Los Angeles offering three non-stop flights weekly – on Monday, Wednesdays, and Saturdays– with an additional Friday flight in July-September.
The Spanish airline expects to carry some 68,000 passengers on the Madrid-Los Angeles route in the first year of operation. To serve the whole region, Iberia has extended its code share agreement with American Airlines and will offer connecting flights to / from Fresno, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and Santa Barbara.
Tomorrow, March 29th, the Spanish airline will also inaugurate its first non-stop transatlantic services from Barcelona to Miami with flights on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Passengers travelling to / from other U.S destinations, such as Dallas, Houston, Orlando and Tampa can connect to the new route via American Airlines. Iberia expects to carry 53,000 passengers on this route in the first year of operation.
Both flights are linked with 35 cities in Spain, 36 European destinations, as well as 10 cities in Africa and the Middle East included in Iberia’s network, according to the airline.
The aircraft used on the route will be a 254-seat Airbus A-340/300, with a 36-seat Business Plus section, recently redesigned, with 2.2 m. of space for each passenger and seats that unfold into horizontal beds.
This new routes, together with the overall capacity increase on its flights from Boston, Chicago and New York to the Spanish capital will consolidate the United States as Iberia's most important long-haul market. In 2011 the airline will offer a total of 1,164,000 seats between the Spain and USA, representing a 13 per cent increase from 2010.
To promote the new flights, Iberia is awarding triple frequent flyer points for tickets acquired in iberia.com through May 31st. The 1,800 points are enough to pay for three return Madrid-Barcelona shuttle flights, for two return trips between Madrid and Casablanca, or for one return flight between Madrid and Athens, Istanbul, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, or other cities in Europe.
The new flights and the overall capacity increase are part of the joint business launched in October last year by Iberia, American Airlines and British Airways for routes over the North Atlantic. Customers of the three airlines have now more travel options available, with more frequencies, more destinations and better connections across their networks. The three airlines’ combined route network serves 433 destinations in 105 countries with almost 5,200 daily departures.
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