TWA launching
St. Louis-Maui flight
The airline will begin
By Russ Lynch
offering nonstop service
March 2 as part of a
companywide expansion
Star-Bulletin
Trans World Airlines Inc. said today it will launch a daily direct service from St. Louis to Maui next year, giving the island its only scheduled direct link from east of the Rocky Mountains.
The service, to start March 2, will use Boeing 767-300 jets seating more than 200 passengers.
TWA already has daily service from St. Louis to Honolulu, also using the 767. "We have great success in Honolulu and moving on to Maui is just building on that success," said Julia Bishop, TWA media relations manager.
The Maui service is part of an overall TWA expansion announced from the St. Louis headquarters this morning.
In all, the airline is adding 46 round-trip flights to its weekly roster, with added services to Puerto Rico, Mexico, the Caribbean and the Middle East as well as Maui.
The airline said it will cut off its services to Rome, Madrid and Barcelona on Jan. 10 because they have been consistently unprofitable. The equipment used on those routes will be shifted to the new services.
The company said it will incur a noncash charge of about $80 million this quarter as it writes off the value of the discontinued routes.
Fleet changes and new routes will increase TWA's total capacity by about 9 percent, said William F. Compton, TWA president and chief executive officer. Compton said that under an earlier-announced plan for 2000, "we are going to grow TWA and we are going to fly where we can make money."
