New Route of the Day (29 November 2021): Azores Airlines between Funchal and New York JFK

Azores Airlines (IATA code S4) introduced the first ever regular scheduled service between Funchal and the US when it began weekly service to New York JFK on Monday 29 November. The first return flight arrived back on the island of Madeira on Tuesday 30 November at 08:15 after a six hour flight. The westbound flight the previous day had taken seven hours and 12 minutes. The airline used an A321neo to launch service on this 5,020-kilometre route. Since the aircraft is based in Ponta Delgada in the Azores, the aircraft routing is PDL-FNC-JFK-FNC-PDL.

This December, 32 European airports have non-stop service from an airport in the US, compared with 43 in December 2019. A total of 12 European airports have ‘lost’ their US winter service according to Cirium Data and Analytics schedules, including Budapest, Düsseldorf, Edinburgh, Kiev KBP, Shannon and Stuttgart. Funchal is the only European airport to have gained a US winter service.

All five Azores Airlines A321neos have special names

Azores Airlines has five A321neos which each feature a different word on their fuselage; “Breathe”, “Wonder”, “Magical”, “Inspire” and “Peaceful”. This new route was operated by “Magical” (registration CS-TSH) and is the airline’s longest route. This winter it is also operating transatlantic flights from Ponta Delgada to Boston (4-weekly) and Toronto (3-weekly), as well as offering service to Lisbon (15-weekly), Porto (7-weekly), Funchal (4-weekly) and Praia on Cape Verde (2-weekly).