Airline Fanatic

Well news from JetBlue hasn’t been so great of late, what with their stock hitting all time lows, and the departure of long time CFO John Harvey.  But all is not lost thankfully as today they’ve put out a press release announcing new service between Orlando and Santo Domingo, DR.

This newest route is the latest in a slew of new service announcements from Florida.  It seems that with the delicate political situation around schedules at JFK, JetBlue doesn’t want to add any more fuel to the fire.  The beneficiaries of this have been Ft. Lauderdale and Orlando, which will see six other routes added as well in the coming months.

Also of note in this announcement is the fact the route will be operated using the E190, the first time that aircraft will be used outside the US by JetBlue.  It certainly makes sense to use a smaller aircraft for what will probably be a low volume route for JetBlue, but also indicates they are now more confident in their new aircraft.

Here are the nitty gritty details: service starts on March 6th of next year, with introductory fares starting at $79 each way, then raising to between $99 and $349 each way under normal operation.  For now the flight will operate once daily between MCO and SDQ.

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.

The Motley Fool just published an excellent and quite comprehensive interview with JetBlue’s new CEO Dave Barger. In it he talks about JetBlue’s ability to compete in an increasingly crowded discount airline market, the airline’s expansions plans and the prospect of increasing government regulation.

Barger actually talked quite a bit about JetBlue’s increasing reliance on the E-190 Embraer 100 seat aircraft it is rapidly adding to its fleet. While the A-320 was once the mainstay of JetBlue’s fleet, the economics of the 190 are even more attractive as it moves into medium and small sized markets. Until now reliability problems have plagued the E190’s on time performance, but these problems seem to have passed judging by Barger’s comments.

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