3 Links I Love: Neeleman Talks Moxy, California Pacific Troubles, Where is Tracy?

Breeze, KLM

This week’s featured link:

JetBlue Founder David Neeleman on How New Airline Moxy Will Change the Way We FlyCondé Nast Traveler
Want more info on Moxy? Here you go. This is a lengthy interview, and some if it seems conflicting. Where I shook my head was when Barbara asked what the “category killer” would be with this new operation. David said “The category killer is being able to charge half the price [of the going rate].” That’s been the business plan of pretty much every unsuccessful start-up airline ever, so I really hope there’s more than that.

Two for the road:

Cancelled flights problematic for California Pacific Airlines – The Coast News Group
Uh oh.  This is what happens when you have so few airplanes.  Things break, and you’re in trouble if you don’t have backup.

Tracy from Minnesota, where are you? – KLM Blog
Ok, red tails, anyone know Tracy?  What a great gesture from long, long ago. 

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11 comments on “3 Links I Love: Neeleman Talks Moxy, California Pacific Troubles, Where is Tracy?

  1. If it boils down to “we’ll charge half the price of Business for comparable service, and half the price of flat bed First for comparable service, and use the revenues from both to subsidize the back of the plane enough to keep it full”, maybe they have a chance if they can fill all the seats?

  2. Moxy will be successful. With legacies upgauging equipment and ramping up hub utilization, there are a lot of opportunities to serve forgotten mid-tier cities that used to endure high prices and lack a plethora of non-stops. The one thing I think won’t end up happening is avoiding competition. That said, the nonstop competition they’ll end up facing will likely be from likes of G4, NK and F9 and I think they’ll take that challenge any day. I think they’ll end up being the inverse of the Sun Country model. Instead of going a lot of places from one Midwestern city, they’ll have focus destination markets (like AUS, RDU, SAN, PDX, EWR) they will connect to underserved Midwest cities (like STL, CVG, CLE, MEM, OKC, ICT, MWK, OMA).

    1. That goes against the “I don’t think we’ll compete with anyone nonstop” deal though. CVG and AUS in particular are focus cities for F9, and CVG is for Allegiant. Now, whether Moxy cares that someone else is selling sub-daily cheap seats on their route is an open question, but they’ll have to chase the other ULCCs off the routes to be able to fill their own planes, which I fully expect to have 29-30″ seat pitch in back.

      As an aside, this is a CS300 we’re talking about, not a CS100, so they’ll need to fill a 737-700/A319 sized plane on these routes. Not as hard as filling an A320/321, but they’re going to have to pick city pairs where they can do their own Southwest Effect for 115-135 seats (depending on whether planes are set up as E-/E+/J/F or E-/E+/J).

      Speaking of which, one interesting thing about a 5-across plane like the A220/CSeries is you aren’t taking as much of a capacity hit when putting in Domestic First style seats…you’re only losing one seat per row. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the non-flat-bed version of the plane has four rows of Domestic First, sold a la carte. Plus exit and right-after-domestic-F rows designated as E+. Plus a bunch of cheap seats.

      Guess we’ll find out how things are configured eventually.

    2. MWK? Will Moxy serve Mount Airy, North Carolina? Maybe they will, if there are enough Andy Griffith Show fans to make the service profitable! Actually, I believe that you mean Milwaukee, Wisconsin (MKE). Season’s greetings!

  3. I just don’t get it. With JetBlue Neelman instantly got a mini fortress handed to him with all the JFK slots.

    I just don’t get what Moxie will be able to do that other carriers can’t immediately pounce on. None of the technology is proprietary, others will copy your “everything through the app” approach if it’s successful. None of the “underutilized” cities are at capacity…anyone else can get a gate and sit on your flights just as easily.

    The only real benefit Moxie will have is a cheap labor force for the first decade or so. They’ll be able to undercut the competition because they should have a much lower CASM than anyone else. It’ll just hinge on if there’s annoying else out there willing to operate flights at a loss for a while.

    I guess it’ll depend how well financed Moxie is and if they could be bled dry before the other airlines are sick of losing money.

    1. Completely desagree. Everybody said the same thing when Uber started. He’ll be successful because his thought is all about technology.

  4. Has he said what his game plan is going to be for pilots (and to a lesser extent AMTs)? How many pilots who put in the 1500 hours are going to be raring to work for a startup when the majors are all offering generous pay and job stability? Compound that by the fact that by the 2020s, we’re going to start seeing the big wave of mandatory pilot retirements putting even more pressure on smaller carriers.

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