More U.S. airports offering international flights

ByABC News
November 13, 2007, 2:03 AM

— -- U.S. airlines' race to boost international flying is expanding service at U.S. airports beyond just the traditional gateways.

For January, airlines have scheduled 1,790 foreign departures a day from continental U.S. airports, 4.7% more than a year earlier, a USA TODAY analysis of data from OAGback Aviation Solutions.

Though Miami and New York John F. Kennedy remain the busiest airports for international flights, places such as Fort Lauderdale, Hartford, Conn., Cleveland and Denver have seen double-digit annual growth.

Each of the six traditional U.S. airlines — American, United, Delta, Continental, Northwest and US Airways — have been boosting international markets, partly to escape the cut-throat competition of the domestic market.

Discounters JetBlue, Spirit and Frontier are expanding international flying, mostly to the Caribbean and Mexico. A new breed of business class airlines — Silverjet and Eos, for example — is growing on business routes such as New York-London. And, at the same time, foreign carriers such as Lufthansa, Qatar and Jet Airways are flying to new U.S. cities as they take delivery of new, long-range aircraft.

Airports, meanwhile, want to cash in on the bonanza, which promises to get richer after March, when the recent Open Skies Treaty between the U.S. and the European Union dismantles many barriers that now restrict trans-Atlantic service.

"These airports want to participate in this growth, because this is the direction of the future," says Chris Spidle, research director for Sabre Airline Solutions.

Charlotte, for example, plans to add a 25-gate international terminal that would open in four years. Austin-Bergstrom plans to build a special, no-frills terminal for Mexican low-cost carrier VivaAerobus, which is seeking approvals to fly to six Mexican cities, including Cancun and Guadalajara.

At Fort Lauderdale, Spirit Airlines now has daily flights to Costa Rica and Peru, and the airport is now angling for its first route to the United Kingdom since before 9/11.