Summary Air Senegal has served New York JFK since 2021. It will cease flying to the airport and the US in mid-September. After that, Lufthansa will be the sole Airbus A340 operator at the airport.
Despite being the US’s leading international gateway, New York JFK is not the country’s number one airport for Airbus A340 flights – Chicago O’Hare is. But the gap between O’Hare and second-placed JFK has widened following Air Senegal pulling out in September. Only Lufthansa will continue using the aging but characterful quadjet to the Queens-located airport.
Air Senegal to end US flights You may already know that Air Senegal will cease flying to JFK. It was revealed last week when I was away. Its last flight from the US will be on September 16 , ending a three-year flirtation with the country.
Its service was more about prestige, political requirements, and visibility than commercial considerations. The Senegal flag carrier first flew to the US in the pandemic-impacted 2021 when it operated Dakar-JFK-Baltimore. It had intended to serve Washington Dulles instead of Baltimore but, oddly, switched to the Maryland airport shortly before the route commenced.
Poor loads meant Air Senegal pulled out of Baltimore in January 2023, leaving Dakar-JFK on a terminator basis. Air Senegal's twice-weekly JFK flights are scheduled as follows, with all times local. The unusual schedule, with over half a day in the Big Apple, is entirely based on connecting traffic in Dakar.
Dakar-JFK : HC407, 04:00-09:00 (9h 00m block) JFK-Dakar : HC408, 01:30-13:50 (8h 20m) Want tickets before they've gone? Get them here! The 16.5 hours on the ground in JFK obviously means high parking charges and lower aircraft use. Still, the latter is less problematic than it might otherwise be as aircraft are wet-leased, which is a significant problem, as discussed later.
It would be even more costly if flights returned soon after arriving, as there would be no flights to connect to with a competitive schedule – and connectivity is critical. Very low load factors Crucially, Air Senegal has no flights to Anglophone Lagos and Accra , JFK's primary West African markets. Even with a twice-weekly service, this negatively impacts traffic and loads .
The lack of a codeshare agreement with a carrier at JFK, whether Delta or JetBlue, also did not help. Of course, Delta serves JFK-Dakar itself, albeit more frequently. According to the US Department of Transportation T-100 data for January 2023 to May 2024, Air Senegal's average JFK load factor was just 64% .
In five months, the LF was 48% to 51%. This is shockingly low and highly unsustainable, even for a route not driven by commercial considerations. And that is despite seemingly much lower fares than Delta.
Sensibly, the airline's tolerance has been markedly reduced under the new CEO, Tidiane Ndiaye. Neither of the routes, which took years of planning, have been served before. The A340 is used Air Senegal has relied on wet-leased equipment (a highly costly setup) because the US Federal Aviation Administration had not conducted an audit of the airline, so it was prohibited from using its own widebodies.
Since August 5, 2024, Flightradar24 shows that it has deployed 26.8-year-old 9H-TQZ, an A340-300 from aircraft, crew, maintenance, and insurance (ACMI) provider Hi Fly Malta. While wet leasing is very expensive, it is much more so with the fuel-inefficient A340.
The airline has used multiple aircraft types and variants to JFK: the A330neo, A330-200, A330-300, and A340-300. In 2024 alone, Flightradar indicates that 9H-HFJ (A330-200), 9H-HFK (A330-200), 9H-EFS (A330-200), 9H-SOL (A340-300), 9H-TQY (A340-300), and now 9H-TQZ have all been used to the Big Apple. Not only is this extremely expensive but imagine the product inconsistency .
Imagine booking flights without knowing what equipment will be used. It is even more problematic when it competes directly with a much more established airline with a higher frequency and better product. The impact on Air Senegal's yields is clear.
Lufthansa is the last A340 operator From September 17, the day after Air Senegal has gone, Lufthansa will be JFK's only A340 user. The type will mainly operate daily from Frankfurt until October 26, rising to 12 times weekly from October 27 (the day northern airlines switch to winter schedules) to mid-January. Both the A340-300 and A340-600 will be used.
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