The much awaited first Boeing 737-800 for Southwest Airlines has finally seen daylight (or, actually night-light). The first aircraft, N8301J, was rolled out of Boeing's Renton flight line on Friday. See below for the photos. Note the ETOPS marking on the nose gear door.

Qantas Airways has announced a number of additional route cuts from Summer, as part of its ongoing restructuring efforts. The affected routes include..

- Auckland - Los Angeles, Airbus A330 service
- Singapore - Mumbai, Airbus A330 service

This would cut Qantas' only link with India, although Los Angeles would continue to be served with other direct routings. All of the above changes take place effective 6th May.

The following change will also be in place from the same date..
-Los Angeles - New York route (continuuation of ex Australia route) will be upgraded from Airbus A330 to Boeing 747-400 equipment

The airline would also switch the aircraft on Bangkok and Tokyo Narita routes from June, with Narita being upgraded to a daily Boeing 747-400 while Bangkok will see a downgrade to Airbus A330 equipment.

Emirates Airline from 1st August will be introducing the Airbus A380 on its Dubai - Amsterdam route. This would make it the first scheduled Airbus A380 service into the Netherlands.
The route presently operates with Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.
Schedule is below.

EK147 DXB 0825 - 1330 AMS 388 D
EK148 AMS 1530 - 2359 DXB 388 D

Emirates Airline from 9th July is launching service to Lisbon in Portugal. Service operates daily on board Boeing 777-200ER aircraft.

Schedule:

Ek191 DXB 0915 - 1445 LIS 772 D
EK192 LIS 1755 - 0435+1 DXB 772 D

Qatar Airways from Summer 2012, will be increasing its flights to Kuala Lumpur from Doha, to 17 times a week. The new service will utilize Airbus A330-200 aircraft on all flights. At present, the airline is operating 13 weekly flights on the route on board Airbus A330-300 aircraft.
Four weekly flights of QR624 and three weekly flights of QR622 continue to Phuket. It must be noted however that there are some discrepancies such as a reduced number of departures on the KUL-DOH leg.

Schedule:
QR624 DOH 0130 - 1420 KUL 332 x27
QR622 DOH 0750 - 2040 KUL 332 x35
QR620 DOH 2000 - 0850+1 KUL 332 D

QR623 KUL 0330 - 0600 DOH EQV 135
QR621 KUL 1020 - 1250 DOH 332 D
QR625 KUL 2110 - 2340 332 x27

 Turkish Airlines, from 28th May, is adding its third daily flight to New York JFK. The new flight will operate on board Airbus A330-300 aircrat. TK's other two daily New York flights operate on board Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

Royal Jordanian Airlines has announced that it will be suspending service to five destinations in a move to cut costs and offset high fuel prices.
Service to following destinations are to be suspended in March and April
-Brussels
-Munich
-Al Ain

Two other gulf cities to be closed will be announced soon.

The airline is cutting back on frequencies to Rome, Vienna, Geneva, Amsterdam, Colombo, Kuala Lumpur and Khartoum while pushing back the launch of services to Accra and Lagos.

RJ has been suffering from recent regional turmoil, high fuel prices due to the country's limited energy reserves and a reduced economic growth in its prime business markets and reported a net loss of JD39.2 million for the first six months of this fiscal year.

 SIA's low cost long haul subsidiary, Scoot, has announced that Gold Coast (IATA:OOL) in Australia will become its second destination. The airline earlier selected Sydney as its first destination.

 Emirates from 1st June 2012, will be adding its third daily flight to Milan. The flight will operate on board Airbus A330-200 aircraft, and will operate from the airline's new third European departures bank. This new bank has seen the addition of flights to Manchester, Frankfurt and Paris recently, after beginning with London Gatwick and Heathrow. The strengthening of this bank will mean the impending expansion of EK's 10-11pm departure bank to Asia, to deliver the feed from these flights. With this addition, the new third daily flight to Rome could be added at any time now, with a likely launch in September or earlier.

Korean Air, from 21st June 2012, launches nonstop service on the Seoul Incheon - Nairobi route; making it the rapidly expanding airline's first Eastern African destination.
The route will operate thrice weekly on board Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

Schedule:
KE959 ICN 2230 - 0530+1 NBO 332 246
KE960 NBO 1030 - 0450+1 ICN 332 357

With a scheduled block time of nearly 14 hours on the Seoul - Nairobi leg, this route could become the presently longest scheduled nonstop flight to be operated on board an Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

Korean is already code-sharing on fellow SkyTeam carrier Kenya Airways' flights between Nairobi and Bangkok, providing a quick connection to Seoul on the other four days of the week.