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Continental Airlines - A Short History

By: Kevin Phillips


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In the initial 40 years of its life, Continental was all the time a US domestic airline; however, after the integration of all Texas International routes, it has since served more Mexican destinations than a lot of other US carriers since the middle of the 80s.

The transatlantic market was primarily entered by Continental in April, 1985, with the introduction of the Houston to London Gatwick UK route. Prevented from the London to Heathrow route because of the provisions of the Bermuda II agreement, Continental Airlines has maintained its London UK services at Gatwick Airport, where in 2007 as many as 6 flights each day were accessible to Houston, Newark, and Cleveland.

For around 40 years, Continental Airline operated a sizeable hub in Denver, Colorado, but decided to shut that hub in 1995 straight after the opening of Denver International Airport. Denver I.A. Represented a significantly higher-cost process than the former Stapleton Airport. The abrupt nature of this swap came as a shock to Denver, which was experiencing fantastic growth at the moment. The big void left by Continental's departure permitted the beginning of the new start-up airline Frontier. Both Southwest Airlines and Frontier expanded fast to fill the vacuum formed by Continental's closure of its Denver hub.

Continental, in concert with Continental Connection and Continental Express offers more than 3000 daily departures all through the Americas, Asia-Pacific and European regions. The summer of 2008 schedule saw Continental serving 132 international and 133 domestic routes with more than 500 other points served via the SkyTeam alliance, a partner airline.

Continental Airlines normally works primarily a hub-and-spoke route association with N. American hubs in Newark, Houston, and Cleveland, as well as a W. Pacific hub out in Guam. Most of its flights are operated from its hubs, with a few exceptions, notably Los Angeles to Honolulu and Seattle to Anchorage. Some affiliated airlines using the Continental Connection partner name additionally control flights not involving hubs, such as Gulfstream International Airlines, which operates inside Florida and the Florida to Bahamas services.

Continental moreover offers the most scheduled frequencies of any of the US airline to Mexico, Ireland, India, Japan and the UK, and is the only US airline to fly to the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, and Marshall Islands. Continental started its service from Newark to Mumbai in India on October 1st, 2007 making that city Continental's 2nd Indian destination.

Continental announced about June 12th, 2008 that it would be ending services to 15 routes as part of efforts to restrict costs due to peak fuel prices, and a plunge in passengers. The airline shut its ticket counters and gates in every one of these airport:
Oakland, California
Palm Springs, California
Reno, Nevada
Sarasota, Florida
Cologne, Germany
Guayaquil, Ecuador
Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia
Cali, Colombia
Monclova, Mexico
Santiago, Dominican Republic
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Alabama , Toledo, Ohio and Montgomery
Tallahassee, Florida
Green Bay, Wisconsin

Continental was in reality one of the first major US airlines to fly the Boeing 757 on transatlantic routes. The use of the 757 with its smaller seating capacity has permitted routes with a reduced amount of passenger traffic to be economically viable. It has made achievable non-stop services from smaller cities, such as Norway, Oslo and Hamburg in Germany to the New York gateway. Previously, customers in these, and comparable cities had to hook up through European gateways like London, UK, Paris, France or Frankfurt, Germany in order to fly to New York.

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For more information on Continental Airlines, and advice on flying with them please visit our web page Continental Airline.

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