You guys know I have an unhealthy obsession with featuring startup airlines that have little chance of actually starting up, right? Well, this one was too good to ignore. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you XAIR.
XAIR has decided that it wants to jump in to the public charter 
world with a most unusual effort. The plan is to fly from its Anchorage base to Seattle. Oh, by the way, they’ll be flying in an all-business class configuration. Oh boy. This’ll be good.
Let’s take a look at this 3 1/2 hour route. Alaska owns the market with 13 flights per day IN THE WINTER. From the first flight out of Seattle at 6a until the last flight at 1145p, there is never a gap of more than 2 hours between flights. In the summer, they have about 20 flights a day with rarely more than an hour in between. If you’re a frequent business traveler flying up front, that schedule is very appealing.
So,what’s the chance there’s really demand for a new operator in here? Spokesperson Johnie Martinez says “there is a segment of the traveling public unhappy with the barrage of additional fees for services and amenities that used to be included in ticket prices.” Yeah, but that’s not the segment that’s flying First Class. Those people don’t pay extra fees.
The airline had a quote on its website that says, “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” Now the quote is “Never, never, never give up.” That may be true if you have a good plan, but in this case, the outcome is certain to be better if you don’t try at all. Please, save your money.
My guess is this airline is dead in the water already. They have a Twitter account, but they’ve only tweeted twice since early October. One touted a new survey, so I took it. They asked me a bunch of questions about where I was from and then they just asked how important frequent flier programs were. That was it.
The other tweet? Just a link sharing that Virgin America was now a citizen. I think they sent that out just to prove that someone was still manning that account. After all, they have a whopping 30 people following them. Gimme a break.
