Several airlines and charter services have recently an-nounced
plans to expand opera-tions between the U.S. and Mexico.
AeroMexico and Continental Airlines have signed a 10-year
al-liance agreement expected to re-sult in direct connections from
13 U.S. cities to 24 destinations within Mexico.
“This agreement will be ex-tremely beneficial to our
passen-gers, particularly business travel-ers, who seek greater
choice and convenience when traveling be-tween the United States
and Mexico,” said Gordon Bethune, chairman and chief executive
of-ficer of Continental.
AeroMexico remains commit-ted to its previous code-share
agreement with Delta Air Lines, a SkyTeam partner.
Details on the larger selection of destinations and flight
sched-ules will be announced later. But the alliance between
AeroMexico and Continental will allow pas-sengers to use a single
e-ticket for travel on both airlines.
Members of AeroMexico’s Club Premier and Continental’s OnePass
frequent flyer programs will be able to accrue and redeem miles on
each other’s networks. And airlines will offer lounge
re-ciprocity.
In addition, American Airlines announced plans to begin new
service on a 142-seat Boeing 737-800 between Dallas/Fort Worth and
Cozumel, with one daily roundtrip flight, beginning Jan. 31.
American will also begin flying twice weekly between Dallas/Fort
Worth and Ixtapa, with roundtrip flights every Wednesday and
Saturday on a 129-seat Boeing Super 80 jet.
And also beginning in Janu-ary, SunTrips will improve flight
times and departure days for its Denver-to-Mexico program.
SunTrips, which offers public charters operated by Ryan
International Airlines, will offer morn-ing departures and evening
re-turns.
The Denver to Cancun/Mayan Coast will operate on a Thursday and
Sunday rotation, while Den-ver to Puerto Vallarta will run Tuesdays
and Saturdays. Both programs will offer four-, five- and eight-day
packages, as well as air only. And SunTrips also offers Cozumel via
AeroCozumel.
