17 New Flight Routes in 2020 to Get Excited About

Every year, airlines look to open new routes. And it turns out to be a win-win for travelers.

Not only does it open new markets for some hubs, but it also can, in some instances, lower fares based on competition.

Here are some of the new routes that have us excited for 2020 travel.

Tokyo has two great airports in Haneda and Narita, but Haneda is much closer to the city and with the opening of new slots more airlines are taking advantage. U.S. airlines were recently given access to 12 additional slots at Haneda Airport, which were distributed between American, Delta, Hawaiian and United. Now the Japanese carriers, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways (ANA), have received 12 additional slots as well. ANA is adding six flights in 2020 between Haneda and Houston, San Jose, Seattle, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Air New Zealand and United Airlines have created nonstop service between New Zealand and the United States East Coast with a thrice-weekly flight between Auckland and Newark Liberty in New Jersey. Service will begin in October 2020.

In August, United made a bold announcement with 12 new and expanded international destinations from Chicago, Denver, New York/Newark and San Francisco. New among them are routes between New York/Newark and Nice, France; Palermo, Italy; and the Caribbean island of Curacao. Service to Curacao begins Dec. 7, 2019; service to Nice starts May 2, 2020, and service to Palermo begins May 20, 2020.

The only airline to fly nonstop between the U.S. and Cape Town, South Africa, United is set to begin the service on Dec. 15, 2019, from its hub at Newark Airport. The new route, with no connections, cuts four hours off travel time.

In late October, German national carrier Lufthansa announced four new routes for the summer of 2020 with new flights scheduled from both Frankfurt and Munich. Starting April 4, 2020, Lufthansa will fly from Munich to Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. On the same date, Lufthansa will offer a once-weekly flight to Minsk, now the fashionable capital of Belarusian. Starting March 30th, 2020, Lufthansa will offer twice-daily year-round flights to the English city of Bristol except for Saturdays when there will only be one flight. The next day, Lufthansa introduces a route from Frankfurt to Rennes, France, operating three days a week.

Talk about your extremes-from the northwest to the southeast. Delta launches a new daily service from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to Tampa International Airport on March 11, 2020.

One of the great cities of the West, Bozeman now gets daily service from Seattle starting Dec. 21, 2019, through Jan. 5, 2020, and then twice-daily service starting Jan. 6, 2020.

Delta is boosting trans-Atlantic seats from Boston by 30 percent in 2020, including twice-daily flights to Rome that actually began on Nov. 21. In addition, Delta is also inaugurating new daily service from Boston to London Gatwick and to Manchester.

Delta has grown its presence in New York City by over 65 percent in the last 10 years and today operates more than 520 peak-day departures from its hubs at LaGuardia and JFK. Make it 521 as Delta launches new service to Mumbai, India, and Bogota, Colombia.

Hard to believe that American has only been to Marrakech, not that that's a bad thing. But, they are now expanding service to Morocco. The carrier will begin a new route to fabled Casablanca from Chicago in June of 2020, and we're confident it's going to be the start of a beautiful friendship.

There is a huge and thriving Polish community in Chicago-approximately 1.5 million, in fact, who are of Polish descent-so what better route than a direct flight to Krakow? It's likely to be very popular when it starts on May 7, 2020.

This one will go out of Dallas-Fort Worth at 10:20 in the evening and arrive at 7:10 the next morning in Israel. The next logical step for American would likely be direct flights to Tel Aviv out of New York or Miami.

New year-round service launches on December 21, 2019, and will fly between New York's LaGuardia airport and Bermuda. With Bermuda actually located about 899 miles east of North Carolina, and at least that much further north than the Caribbean, you're not getting winter temp in the 80s or 90s. But it's still a great getaway.

On December 21, 2019, American Airlines is launching new Saturday-only flights from both Dallas/Fort Worth and Chicago O'Hare to the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Thomas. The Dallas flights will operate on Boeing 757 planes year-round, while the Chicago service will be seasonal and fly on A319 planes.

This one had been planned for a while. On Feb. 1, 2020, JetBlue is launching direct flights between New York's JFK airport to Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe. The new route makes JetBlue the only airline flying between the Northeast and the French territory after Norwegian Air ended its service to the island earlier in 2019.

A welcome entry from the budget airline. Sun Country will launch direct routes between Minneapolis-St. Paul and Nassau on December 21, 2019. Nassau was unaffected by Hurricane Dorian.

Now that Southwest has ended its service at Newark Airport and opened its fleet a little more, it can continue its expansion into Hawaii. Between Jan. 19 and Jan. 21, 2020, Southwest will fly its first routes from Oakland to Kona and from San Jose to Kona and Lihue. It will also offer three new interisland routes from Honolulu to Kona and Lihue four times a week, and a daily round trip between Kahului and Kona.