Once again, it came down to slots. JetAmerica couldn’t get any at Newark, and there were rumors that the FAA was about to drop the hammer on the airline. See, you’re not supposed to sell tickets if you don’t actually have slots. Oops. So maybe JetAmerica finally saw the writing on the wall and decided to call it quits or maybe the FAA made the decision for them. Either way, in what should be a surprise to nobody, they’re not even going to get started.

If you had booked tickets on the airline, you’ll get your money back. If you’re an airport and you gave them funds already, well, good luck. I hope nobody spent too much on these guys.

So is this the last we’ve heard of them? They seem to think otherwise. This statement appears on the JetAmerica website:

. . . we have decided to suspend our operations in order to refocus on different markets. We still strongly believe that there is an unmet need for affordable air service to secondary markets and we look forward to offering this option again in the near future.

Oh please no. Just let it die. I can’t imagine any airport wanting to work with them again. Maybe they’ll pop up in some other form some day, but I think they’ve spent all their goodwill by now. If different markets were they answer, they should have started that way. They’ve now had 3 strikes (Air Azul failed to start, one month delay in JetAmerica service, and now the ultimate demise), and as far as I’m concerned, they’re out.

In a way, I feel bad for founder John Weikle. He seems like a complete and total optimist who wants to bring service to small communities. It’s an admirable goal, but so far I’ve yet to see a model come even close to working that can serve that purpose. John has done a remarkable job of finding investors for his ventures, but I just can’t imagine that he’ll be so lucky again.

Nothing to see here. Keep moving.

[Original image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27466406@N00/ / CC BY-SA 2.0]

Could this actually be a glitch? I tried to call the reservations line, but I gave up after about 10 minutes or so. I have this picture in my mind of a phone ringing repeatedly at someone’s house, but they had fallen asleep so it just kept ringing. Anyway, Jaunted picked up the story last night, and they did get through. They were told by reservations that it was a server error. Yeah, right.

Anyone know what kind of server error just magically deletes a month of flights but otherwise functions perfectly? That’s what I thought. If the reservations system is to be believed (which I tend to think is more trustworthy than what we’ll get over the phone), August 14 will see the first flights from Newark to Toledo and Lansing as well as from Minneapolis to Toledo. (I wouldn’t bet on that Minneapolis date.) On the 15th, they’ll have their first flights from Melbourne to Lansing and Toledo. On the 16th, we’ll see their first flights from Newark to Melbourne and South Bend. I now have to wonder if anyone will be onboard.

Let’s all recall that this was originally Air Azul. That airline announced plans and then quickly imploded on itself. After John Weikle got involved, the airline became JetAmerica and the routes changed. People were probably already wary about booking after that happened, but they may have figured that with the brains behind Skybus working on this, it would at least get off the ground.

Now with service delayed again, would you even consider booking beyond that date? I know that I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t think about spending a penny until I see an airplane in the air on an actual flight with passengers. Something tells me that the chances of that actually happening has just dropped dramatically.

If you were booked on JetAmerica before August 14, I would call their reservations line right now and demand a refund. Of course, if they keep insisting that it’s a server error, well, you may have to wait. The good news about public charters is that the money is held in an account until you actually fly, so you should be able to get your money back.

[Original photo from penner42 via Flickr]

Update 7/2 @ 138p – “Server error” my ass. JetAmerica has now sent emails out to booked customers explaining that they can’t get slots in time (they sound very whiny) so everyone booked before Aug 14 will get a refund. I will post the full letter in the comments section soon.

I honestly couldn’t make this sound any worse if I tried. The CEO is John Weikle, one of the original founders of Skybus. He has slightly tweaked the plans laid out when the airline was going to be named Air Azul. Now, the flights from Rockford are gone, as are the BWI connectors. And instead of infringing upon JetBlue’s trademark, they’ll now infringe upon Alaska’s trademark. Alaska still owns the trademark for Jet America to provide charter airline services. And yes, this is a charter operation for now.

Assuming that doesn’t cause them problems, flights begin on July 13 between Newark and Lansing, Melbourne (Florida), South Bend, and the mighty Toledo. It looks like the Toledo hub starts growing on August 14 when flights to Minneapolis begin with the arrival of the second aircraft.

How the heck is this going to work? Four of the six airports involved will pour in more than $3m in the first year to kickstart the service. Can you guess which two won’t be paying? Yeah, exactly. Minneapolis and Newark hardly need to pay for this, but the others are desperate to build service.

My understanding was that Rockford was willing to waive some fees to get them in there as well, so why did they drop it? One article has Weikle saying, “Lansing and South Bend stayed on the roster because they were close to Toledo, so it would be easier to shuttle planes between them.” Oh yeah, always a good idea to fly to cities because they’re close to each other. Yikes.

The idea is to offer more Allegiant-style flying where you only fly a couple days a week to most cities. The plane spends every night in Toledo and then flies out to different places each day. The most frequent is to Newark which happens every morning but Saturday. South Bend, on the other hand, only sees two flights a week from Newark.

The schedule is really funky. There were a lot of typos in the schedule, but most I could figure out. Assuming that the flight from Melbourne to Toledo should take the same 2 and a half hours that the southbound flight takes (and not the 1 and a half hours in the schedule and on the reservation system), they’ll only be utilizing their aircraft for 9.75 hours a day.

Even that doesn’t show the true utilization during the day, because the schedule has a lot of wasted ground time. No turn is shorter than an hour and some, including Lansing in the middle of the day, are over two hours long. Could this be to accommodate the guaranteed delays they’ll face out of Newark? No, they’ve already built that in to a schedule For example, the afternoon flight from Newark to Toledo is blocked at 45 minutes longer than a late night flight on the same route.

This strategy may work for Allegiant where their fixed costs are low, but you generally don’t want to see brand-spanking new airplanes sitting on the ground for that long. It’s hard to pay for them that way. This may not matter for now under their lease agreement, but if they truly plan to be operating their own airline within two years, this is hardly the right precedent to set.

Maybe they’ll do better with their second plane. After all, CEO John Weikle admits that they’re only running the first plane like this because of all the incentives they’re getting. But the second airplane that comes in August will have a morning flight from Toledo to Minneapolis and then a late night return. It seems to me that they’re setting up Minneapolis to look a lot like Newark once the second plane comes around. The press release (which could be one of the worst press release ever assembled) says that future focus cities could include Rockford, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Greensboro, Pittsburgh, St Petersburg (Florida), and yes, Charleston (West Virginia).

Tickets are supposed to be on sale now at jetamerica.com, though at last check, the site was down due to a database error. This could be one of the most disorganized efforts I’ve seen in a long time.

Here’s the story. The name Air Azul was trashed and the websites completely disappeared in the last couple weeks. Ben over at USA Today rounded up stories about the end of the idea at the time. But just because Air Azul died doesn’t mean it’s gone for good.

Well, the name actually is gone for good, probably (I would guess) thanks to some unhappiness from the JetBlue crew. I wouldn’t want another blue-related name around town if I were them either. Now, BusinessRockford.com is reporting that the new name will be JetAmerica and bookings will start on May 11.

Now you guys know how I feel about resurrecting old airline names. (The original JetAmerica was based in Long Beach in the 1980s before being swallowed up by Alaska.) But most people probably don’t remember the original in this case anyway. There’s something more significant at work here regarding the name. Jaunted has been covering the original Skybus founder John Weikle’s efforts to start a new airline for over a year. The name of that airline? JetAmerica.

You remember this one. It was supposed to be Skybus but out of Charleston, West Virginia. While I haven’t seen any confirmation of Weikle’s involvement in this one, the use of the name tells me that he will be involved with this bad boy somehow. Want another clue? Nine seats on each flight will be sold for $9. How very Skybussy.

From the article, it sounds like some of Air Azul’s previously-announced routes will be flown (Rockford to Baltimore and New York, for example), but I have to wonder how long it is before we see Charleston back in the mix. At least one report says that all aircraft will be based in Toledo, though that statement was retracted by JetAmerica just as fast as it was announced. Oh boy.

Something tells me that the chance of this working is very, very slim. And that’s being kind. Let’s hope that it at least lasts longer than, well, Air Azul did . . . .