Eastern will stop flying the Miami-Guayaquil route in times of strong competition between US airlines

A year after starting the Miami-Guayaquil route, Eastern made the decision to stop flying that route and stay with the flights between New York and Guayaquil.

The airline announced that it will cease its flights to Miami after July 7 at the José Joaquín de Olmedo airport and will proceed with the reimbursement of tickets to those who have bought to fly after that date.

An executive of the airline in Ecuador confirmed that Eastern will no longer fly from next week to Miami, but will keep its flights between Guayaquil and New York, the first route that opened in its incursion in South America.

Eastern competed directly with American Airlines at the destination to Miami. And his decision to stop flying to that city arises weeks after American increased a third daily frequency in Guayaquil and a third in Quito, which increased the offer of available chairs.

The increase in American flights was executed after this company managed to be assigned new frequencies to Miami once it gave up flying to Dallas, a city that reached from Quito and Guayaquil. That is, this increase was a crossing of some frequencies for others.

Eastern's departure leaves American again in direct service to Miami. Latam has plans to open a Guayaquil service to Bogotá, which will connect with Miami.

The cease of Eastern operations to Miami occurs in a year when US airlines have been making movements and orders to the transport authorities to focus on profitable routes.

Precisely, Jetblue won weeks ago a fight he had with Eastern Airlines for routes in Ecuador in the United States Department of Transportation (DOT).

The first airline made orders to move frequencies between Fort Lauderdale and Quito to add a second daily flight from New York to Guayaquil. On his side, Eastern intended to reassess Jetblue frequencies to expand his New York services to Ecuador.

The DOT finally issued a ruling that favored Jetblue, which has already announced that from August he will add a new service between New York and Guayaquil.

This week, the Ministry of Tourism of Ecuador indicated that this new frequency will be operational as of August 7. That is, in practice, Jetblue lowers its frequencies on the Fort Lauderdale-Quito-Fort Lauderdale route to compete more strongly in the New York-Guayaquil.

With this, the airline will operate weekly since August a total of four frequencies on the Fort Lauderdale-Quito-Fort Lauderdale route; Seven Fort Lauderdale-Guayaquil-Fort Lauderdale and fourteen frequencies on the New York-Guayaquil-New York route.