Whoa. Suddenly, everybody's Hot in Cleveland.
Hopkins International Airport, thought to be devastated earlier this year when United Airlines dropped the city as one of its hubs and eliminated more than 100 daily flights, is back as a player.
JetBlue Airways this week announced a new route with twice-daily nonstop service between Cleveland's Hopkins Airport and Boston's Logan International, making Cleveland its newest - and 88th overall - destination. JetBlue will use 100-seat Embraer E190 jets.
"We can't wait to bring our low fares to Clevelanders, starting with a route that is currently suffering from extremely high fares," Dave Clark, JetBlue's VP of network planning, said in a statement. "JetBlue looks forward to adding Cleveland to our route network and we see a bright future in this market."
In fact, Clark told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer newspaper that Cleveland had been on JetBlue's radar for the last several years, and that the airline had bigger hopes in mind if the Cleveland-Boston route proved successful. That led some to speculate that JetBlue might eventually begin service to Florida from Hopkins - not a bad idea given how many people in northeast Ohio might be inclined to get away in winter from the usual lake effect snows.
JetBlue's announcement prompted another new Cleveland-Hopkins resident, Frontier Airlines, to hold a fare sale earlier this week. A single-day sale on Tuesday featured one-way tickets for $29 and $49 depending on destination, good for travel on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays between Jan. 6 and Feb. 15.
The $29 fares were for one-way flights from Cleveland to Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver; the $49 fares were for trips to Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Orlando and Tampa, Florida, as well as to Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Not to be outdone, Spirit Airlines today held a promotion in downtown Cleveland in which it gave away certificates good for 10,000 frequent flier miles on the carrier. Spirit begins nonstop service from Cleveland-Hopkins to Orlando, Tampa and Fort Myers, on Jan. 15; to Fort Lauderdale, Dallas and Las Vegas on Feb. 5; and to Los Angeles and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina beginning April 16.
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