Star Marianas Air (S2, Tinian) has announced it will resume Guam International-Rota International flights on July 10, 2018, taking over the route terminated by United Airlines at the end of May 2018.
The regional specialist will operate the service 7x weekly using its Piper (twin piston) PA-31 and PA-32 aircraft. Star Marianas Air is currently the sole scheduled carrier serving Rota, operating 21x weekly flights to Saipan.
Rota has not seen scheduled traffic to Guam since May 31, when United Airlines (UA, Chicago O'Hare) stopped its Guam-Saipan-Rota service due to low demand. The route was operated on behalf of United by Cape Air (9K, Hyannis) with ATR42-300 equipment.
United has since said it would consider relaunching services to Rota if the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) government provided a subsidy for the operations. So far, an agreement to that effect has not materialised. The carrier would currently only be able to deploy larger B737-700 or B737-800 aircraft on the route.
Charter airline Arctic Circle Air Service (CIR, Saipan) currently offers ad-hoc services to Rota.
Besides the scheduled services to Rota, Star Marianas Air also offers 84x weekly service out of Saipan to Tinian.
