Airline Fanatic

We’ve all been wondering when JetBlue would finally get around to flying to our great neighbor to the North – Canada.  Well with this post I’m happy to announce that – we all have to wait a bit longer to find out.  Canada’s Globe And Mail however, has a fairly detailed piece about Big Blue’s attitudes and plans for Canada.  The paper gets a little bit more this time than the usual “Yes we are interested in that destination” and “no we have no firm plans at this time” from JetBlue’s PR man Sebastian White.  Instead he says JetBlue will start charter service to Canada in the spring, but is waiting on starting discussions on regularly scheduled service until it gets “regulatory clearance.”

This news isn’t too surprising, as JetBlue’s founder and recently ex-CEO David Neeleman used to run a little airline up in Canada called WestJet, and so has a lot of experience to lend in the area (although he has lots of experience to lend in every area of the airline industry).  The biggest stumbling block seems to be cost though, as Toronto’s Pearson airport has the highest landing fees in the whole wide world, something that you might consider radioactive in the low cost market.  JetBlue frequently gets airports to lower landing fees in exchange for new service, so I highly doubt they would jump into Toronto without a big reduction in landing fees, or compensation from the airport in some other area.

That doesn’t mean they won’t start service to Canada at all though, since there are a few other cities in the great white north.  I could definitely see JFK-Vancouver flights and Oakland-Vancouver flights, perhaps with a little bit of Calgary and Winnipeg thrown in.  With JetBlue’s big Ft. Lauderdale expansion coming up this winter, they could also add some leisure routes to Florida from Canada.  Leisure routes are JetBlue’s bread and butter, so it would make sense to see them go after this, especially in the high demand winter months.

Finally lets face it, flying to Canada is a great way to make money.  Current round-trips between Toronto and New York can run over $1200!  JetBlue typically can lop off up to 50% of the cost of existing airfare, but that still leaves the cost at around $600, which is a nice little cash cow for such a short route.  Though I sometimes like to think of JetBlue as egalitarian and providing service to everyone for great prices, they are still in this thing to make money after all.  Only time will tell exactly how long it is before they make an announcement for public service, but I suspect it is still several months, if not a full year away.

Virgin America sent all of its eleVAte (VA’s frequent flier program) members an email this morning giving them advanced notice about a promotional flight they are throwing together with Victoria’s Secret. 

VA is throwing an extremely Virgineqsue event, without the typically creative Virgin title – Victoria’s Secret Supermodel PJ Party.  Two underwear models (Selita Ebanks and Miranda Kerr) will be on board this flight from New York’s JFK to LAX, and it will only happen once – November 28th on Flight 317.  Since I won’t be able to be on that flight (you know, the whole work thing) I wanted to let all my readers now about it instead.

Other than the beautiful bodies on board – who will most likely stay couped up in first class for the majority of the flight – there will be prizes, PJs and, according to the email, “more.”  Now that sounds exciting.  You can book your tickets to the flight here, last time I checked, it was still on $159 one way, which is a great fare even when there aren’t supermodels on board.

Oh, and don’t get any lofty ideas about joining the mile-high club on this flight, in typical Virgin America fashion this thing will be a media magnet, so there will be plenty of cameras on board to catch you in the act.

After 18 months of delays, its finally happened, the A380 is winging its way on its maiden commercial voyage from Singapore Changi to Sydney.  Seats on the maiden voyage were auctioned on eBay with the proceeds going to charity.  Some ended up paying six figure numbers for seats on this flight.  The double decker giant ended up carrying 471 people on their way to Sydney today.

More JetBlue news keeps winging its way this direction with some more new service announcements.  After its surprising quarterly earnings, the low cost carrier announced it was adding service between Buffalo, NY (BUF) and Ft. Myers, FL (RSW) as well as between White Plains (HPN) and Ft. Myers.  This service will run during the winter high season and then be discontinued come April, 31st.  JetBlue has been doing quite a few of these announcements recently, which is a departure from their traditional investment in year round markets.  Why the change?

Well I see it more as testing the waters with seasonal service before they make the major announcement of year round service.  This way they can gauge demand for the route, as I’m sure JetBlue knows the change in seasonality in North – South traffic; they do make their living that way after all.  If they project service could be maintained even in the off season, then I’m sure you will see service continue.  If not, then it will be pulled and it can be claimed it was part of the plan all along.

I am actually somewhat confident JetBlue might be able to make the White Plains to Ft. Myers service stick.  HPN is in their home town New York area and RSW’s area is growing like wild fire.  Buffalo would be a stretch though, just in strict terms of the number of people there with access to the airport.

After my post on JetBlue’s impressive quarterly results, the Wall Street Journal talks with Ray Neidl about United and JetBlue, as well as some general discussion about the airline sector going forward.  Its a worthwhile three minutes.

JetBlue airways had their 3rd quarter conference call this morning and announced a stunning swing back to profits.  Not only did they make money, but they almost doubled Wall Street’s estimates.  They posted earning of 12 cents a share for the quarter while expectations had them pegged at only 7 cents.

JetBlue also announced they would be dropping service to Columbus, Ohio, and Nashville, Tennessee, as well dropping one daily flight between Oakland, California and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  I’m not surprised that JetBlue would do this from their smaller hub in Boston, but to see them dropping service from their home airport of JFK piqued my interest.  I guess that unlike Delta’sold Song division they are focused on making money and staying efficient.  The E190s currently being used on this route look like they will be relocated to serve new routes starting three days later between the Northeast and Southeast and Florida.

One final note, JetBlue also announced they would sell at least two more Airbus A320 in early 2008, and possibly more if market conditions were favorable.  They’ve been doing this for a while now as a way to hold down the size of the fleet and slow growth.  As the pace of A320’s slows down a little, no announcement was made about E190 deliveries, which shows they continue to be a very efficient plane on which to run an airline.

All in all it was a pretty good quarter for the low cost carrier, which remained bullish and forecasted a strong holiday travel season.

This apparently happened a while ago, but it just came across my radar screen. United Airlines has “enhanced” their frequent flier program yet again, by disallowing 500-mile upgrade coupons from rolling over into your mileage account balance.

For years, Premier members of the Mileage Plus program have received “500-mile” coupons (now electronic) that upgraded your North American flights from coach to first class. (You get four of these coupons every time you reach 10,000 flown miles on the airline. One coupon can upgrade you for 500 miles of distance flown; thus the “500-miler” moniker.) If you couldn’t use your 500-milers, they’d expire after one year, but all was not lost: They converted to 500 redeemable frequent flyer miles in your account.

Not any more.

In another “enhancement” of the Mileage Plus program, 500-milers won’t convert to frequent flyer miles upon expiration anymore. They’ll just expire worthless if you don’t cash them in. (And let me tell you from personal experience, they’ve gotten harder and harder to actually put to use.)

And the march towards better customer service continues!

Via Upgrade: Travel Better