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.

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.

Fast CompanyMagazine just came out with their November issue, and inside I wasn’t surprised when I found an interview with Virgin America’s CEO: Fred Reid. Why was I not surprised? Fast Company is always interviewing people involved with “it” brands, and there is nothing hotter in the aviation world right now than Fred Reid and Virgin America. You can check out the mostly fluff piece over on Fast Company’s website.

Inside you’ll find mostly what would expect to see from Virgin and a new low cost carrier. The legacy carriers have terrible customer service, we improved on things a little bit from the way JetBlue operates, and added that little bit of Virgin flair that makes all of their companies special. Two things I found out about VA I didn’t know before: they will only fly to primary airports in the cities they serve. This means airports that are usually LCC favorites like Oakland (OAK), Long Beach (LGB), and Ft. Lauderdale (FLL), won’t see any red tails in the foreseeable future. Also, Reid plans to offer meals on his planes that cost $20! He thinks those able to afford first class will be able to expense it, and he is probably right, but I still find it hard to believe he can make airline food taste good enough to justify $20. We shall see though, after all, VA is part of the Virgin empire, and crazy stuff happens over there all the time.

The BBC is reporting that several Flybe pilots and crews are refusing to work on the the discount carrier’s Aerospace 146 fleet. According to the BBC, there have been 10 leaks of contaminated air over the past 15 months. One one flight, two attendants fainted in midflight and the entire crew had to be hospitalized upon landing. If the air crews were having this tough a time, its hard to imagined how unseasoned travelers would deal with the same air quality problems.

Of course Flybe corporate says: “Flybe is completely confident that its aircraft are operated and maintained to the highest industry standards.”  Not that they would ever admit anything if something was in fact amiss.  Either way, the problem will be gone soon enough – Flybe is phasing out the 146 by February 2008.