We already talked about the massive number of orders rolling in at the Paris Air Show this week, but there was one that caught my eye. That’s right, it was JetBlue’s announcement that it will be buying A320neos, larger A321s, and reducing its planned fleet of Embraers. This was a very interesting and telling order about the future of the airline.

Here’s what’s happening.

• JetBlue is ordering 40 A320neo aircraft. These are the re-engined A320s that offer fuel savings and greater range.
• JetBlue has 52 regular A320s on order now. Thirty of those will be converted to larger A321s and eight will be pushed back a couple years. All A320s will have winglets installed.
• JetBlue will grow its Embraer 190 fleet to only 75. Previously it was going to be 100 with options for more.

If there was any question where JetBlue was planning to go in the next few years, we know now the answer for sure. It starts with CEO Dave Barger’s BlueNote (internal memo) which says this:

I believe that our network strategy focused on Boston and the Caribbean/Latin America has given us the right to grow.

In other words, JFK is good but it’s not a huge growth opportunity. That’s largely an airport constraint, but it’s a reality. So growth will be in Boston (which has already been growing like crazy) and in the Caribbean/Latin America, where we’ve actually seen some pretty good growth as well. Everywhere else? It’s just going to be a matter of how they fit into these focus areas.

The upgrade to the A321 makes a lot of sense in this context. It’s a bigger airplane, and that means more seats. There are 150 seats on a JetBlue A320, and I’d bet we’d see about 30+ more on the A321. It costs less per seat to fly those airplanes, so for markets with high demand, it’s a no-brainer. To me, it seems that this airplane can do really well flying between the Northeast/South US and Latin/Caribbean markets. Those are markets that are highly leisure so they don’t need as much frequency. That’s why American used to fly its big old A300 aircraft down to the Caribbean. Load ‘em up and ship ‘em out.

Interestingly, JetBlue also sees an opportunity “in the potential application of the 321 on some of our heavy transcon markets such as JFK-LAX, JFK – San Francisco.” I can see some limited use there, but I expect the A321 won’t be seen on the west coast nearly as much. This does however highlight the shift in focus from Long Beach and Oakland to LAX and San Francisco for longer haul flights.

The A320neo, however, will likely fly west far more often. One of the problems JetBlue faces, especially during winter months when winds are strong, is a lack of range on the A320. This is particularly an issue for flights from Boston, which you’ll often see in cities like Vegas or Salt Lake because they ran out of gas on their way to California. The A320neo will give a range boost that will allow those airplanes to make it without any trouble.

Then again, this might not be necessary. With JetBlue also putting winglets on its current A320s, those airplanes should be able to make it as well. So the A320neo will just provide a more fuel efficient airplane that might make marginally unprofitable flights today a reality tomorrow. Or it could make wildly profitable flights even more wildly profitable. The reality is that if you want to order an A320 these days, you order the neo unless you have an urgent need in the next couple years. (You listening, Boeing? That 737 isn’t going to cut it for much longer.)

The last piece of this announcement is the Embraer 190. That really was David Neeleman’s baby as he envisioned opening up smaller markets with that plane and its 33 percent fewer seats than the A320. That dream is not the dream of JetBlue today, that’s for sure. The plan was originally to have around 100 Embraer 190s in the fleet (and there were options for more), but JetBlue is cutting that back to 75. This could be an alteration to the existing order, but it sounds like there might be a plan to instead lease out or sell 25 of the airplanes in one way or another.

The 190 is an interesting story. Many of its routes were failures – places like Columbus, Ohio and Nashville quickly disappeared when they just didn’t work. Now JetBlue thinks it’s found good placement for 75 of the airplanes but it doesn’t want any more than that. There are only 46 today, so there will still be more growth in the fleet, but it’s just not as rosy as the airline once thought. The 190 is taking a back seat.

To me, the upshot of this announcement is that JetBlue affirms its position as an east coast airline and it’s tailoring its fleet to fit the missions it wants to fly. The Boston-New York-Caribbean-Latin markets are clearly the focus. What about the west coast? Seems like we won’t be seeing much if anything out here. Maybe the A320neo will enable Hawai’i flying but that’s years away, and I wouldn’t count on it. Instead, the west cost will continue to be a spoke that feeds the east coast with the exception of the small short haul outpost in Long Beach. At least, that’s how it looks today.

Remember that post about how Spirit should move into the intra-Caribbean market? Looks like JetBlue is going to beat Spirit to the punch. JetBlue already flies from San Juan to Santo Domingo, and now it’s going from San Juan to St Maarten as well. Is this a good move?

When I saw JetBlue announce it was moving its flight to Ft Lauderdale from Long Beach to LAX, I wasn’t surprised. It was just one more step in the effort to move long hauls away from Long Beach and into LAX. Looking back at JetBlue’s nearly 10 years in Long Beach, you can see how stark the change has been. Long Beach serves a very different role now than it did originally for the airline.

JetBlue doesn’t do much flying in the middle of the country, so it’s no surprise to see very little of that type of flying happening in Long Beach. But it is surprising to see how few long hauls are left at the airport.

From Long Beach, JetBlue originally started with flights to New York in September 2001 and followed with Washington soon after. One year after starting at Long Beach, the first short haul began up to Oakland. But long hauls still remained the focus and didn’t start to really go away until early 2008.

Since that time, the drop in long haul flying has been dramatic. Here’s another way to look at it. Look at the number of daily departures from Long Beach to New York.

At one time, JetBlue flew eight daily flights between the two cities. That’s just unreal. It’s now down to just two daily, and at times even that second daily flight doesn’t run every day. Meanwhile, in June 2009, JetBlue started flying to LAX. Today, there are three flights most days from LAX to JFK and that number will rise to five daily this summer.

So what’s the story? When JetBlue started at Long Beach, people were willing to drive for the low fares, live television, and great service. But that’s because low fare, long haul trips were few and far between at LAX. JetBlue chose Long Beach for its lower costs and lack of competition. Today, things are very different.

Low fare service has gone into primary airports across the board. In the LA-New York market, Song showed up in 2005 before being merged back in to Delta. Now, Virgin America is the prime provider of low cost service to New York along with JetBlue (and a bunch of connecting options). The point is, people who prefer LAX do not have to drive to an alternate airport to get low fares anymore. So that changes the math at Long Beach.

JetBlue realized that with people not having to drive to Long Beach to get low fares, long haul flights wouldn’t be as lucrative down there. Besides, people coming from far away didn’t even know Long Beach and had a strong preference for LAX anyway. It moved into LAX in order to keep the traffic that used to be willing to go to Long Beach. But short haul is different.

Those who are traveling on shorter flights are less willing to drive to airports that are further away. So people that live in the heavily-populated area around Long Beach will drive to LAX if they’re going to New York, but they’re less likely to do it if it’s just a jaunt to Vegas or San Francisco. So JetBlue has repositioned Long Beach as a short haul-focused operation serving that community. Low fares are good, but it’s the convenience of the airport that makes it work best.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Long Beach couldn’t support any long haul flights, but JetBlue has to make a choice. Since Long Beach is heavily slot-restricted, JetBlue has to use its 30 daily flights in the best way possible. Considering the current dynamics in the industry, it decided that short haul is the way to go, so long haul will continue to migrate up the road to LAX.

Moving this Ft Lauderdale flight allows JetBlue to add yet another flight to Vegas. Apparently, JetBlue sees enough business traffic potential in this market that it is creating a business-type schedule instead of the afternoon-only leisure schedule that used to be in the market.

Yes, this is partially a response to Allegiant (JetBlue’s network planning chief tells me that the airline “competes hard”) but it’s also an effort to optimize its slots. And these days, short haul flying is far more optimal for secondary airports.

The feds have decided to let JetBlue throw a few Garmins on an airplane and use GPS instead of radar. Ok, so maybe it’s not that dramatic, but JetBlue will be installing GPS to test out the NextGen air traffic control system that has been talked about for years. Is this a good thing? Do you trust the technology? Will it really help gridlock in the end?

This trip might as well be called the T5 trip, because not only did I get to experience Heathrow Terminal 5, but I also had my first brush with JetBlue’s Terminal 5 at JFK. Both have now been open for some time, but I hadn’t experienced either. And they couldn’t be more different.

While Heathrow’s T5 is a monument to open space and design that cost £4.3 billion to build (more on this next week), JFK’s T5 is more about convenience and modesty at just $800 million. Both are great facilities in their own right, but the JetBlue facility is more up my alley.

I took the AirTrain in from the city, so I got off at the T5/T6 stop. As you may know, T6 is the former home of JetBlue, but it’s been empty since T5 opened and it will be demolished. So this really is only a T5 stop for now, but the stop requires going past the terminal and then walking back.

Once off the train, I had a great view of what remains of the old T5, the TWA terminal designed by Eero Saarinen. The distinctive shape still stands proud, though it’s currently unused. After getting off the train, a foot bridge winds its way past the TWA terminal and then descends into the far side of T5. It’s a long walk, which is bound to be inconvenient to many, but the views can’t be beat.

The first thing that struck me was how little space there is outside security. The ticketing area is long with high ceilings and it brackets the massive security line entrance in the middle. Security dominates much of the terminal area but it doesn’t seem intrusive. And there is plenty of room for the lines inside the terminal.

Once through security, I walked on a narrow side ramp into the heart of the terminal itself. The place really opens up nicely once you get beyond the metal detectors. The center area is in a triangular shape that has concourses going off to the left, right, and straight ahead. In the middle of the center area is a round electronic sign up high with messaging that you may have seen in press shots. Underneath it is an empty area where JetBlue has recently begun a concert series to entertain travelers. (I use the word “entertain” loosely since Taylor Swift and James Blunt aren’t exactly my style.)

Surrounding the center area is a food court on one side along with nice restaurants on the other. Shops and other restaurants ring around the edges as well. Though the area is indoors, the large restaurant seating in the open center almost gives it an outdoor cafe/walking street kind of feel with music in the background.

I was running a little late, so I didn’t have time to order food from one of the restaurants. I just had to grab something quickly. I was happy to see that there are small to-go places almost everywhere in the terminal so even when there are lines at the main restaurants, you can always find a way to grab something quickly and run to your airplane.

I picked up a turkey cranberry sandwich (which was really good, by the way) and then walked down the central concourse to get to my gate. The concourses look like what you’d expect out of a concourse but they have large skylights with a ton of natural light flooding in. The gate areas seem to have plenty of seating to make it a comfortable space.

When I reached the gate, they had just started boarding, so I got in line. The guy behind me was in his 20s and I heard him say, “I feel like I’m in the coolest terminal in the world and now I have to leave.” Something tells me he wouldn’t have been saying that had he been stuck in a legendary JFK delay. Fortunately, we went right on time.

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January 21, 2011
JetBlue 209 Lv New York/JFK 115p Arr Long Beach 424p
New York/JFK (JFK): Gate 17, Runway 31L, Depart On Time
Long Beach (LGB): Gate 5, Runway 30, Arrive 20m Early
N637JB, Airbus A320-232, Big Blue Bus (Stripes tail), ~98% Full
Seat 14F
Flight Time 5h36m

Once onboard, I took my seat and it was just like any other JetBlue flight. We only had to taxi for 12 minutes before we were airborne into the gusty but clear New York day.

The lead flight attendant got on the horn and said that he knew it was a Friday afternoon and we were all anxious to get out of New York, so he wanted to treat us with free movies. When the response was muted, he said “I said ‘free movies’” and everyone started cheering.

Our route took us way north into Canada before crossing into Michigan and Wisconsin. Then we started heading down south and the snow-covered ground melted away. I did watch a movie and then I watched a bunch of bad TV, which is actually how I want to spend a flight.

They handed out a bunch of snacks and drinks as usual, and everyone got their full can of soda. (My whole row had ginger ale. We’re awesome.)

The short taxi time on the way out meant we landed nice and early in Long Beach. We taxied for three minutes, and I was at the curb in 5 more, ready to head home.

See more JFK T5 Photos