JetBlue drops Oakland, shrinks Long Beach amid broader route shakeup – TPG
JetBlue is cutting Long Beach again, and I chimed in for this TPG article. I, as you can imagine, have much more to say about this, so look for a post next week.
My interview with Brett Snyder, the Crankyflier – “Airlines we lost – 2019” – Spotting TV
I sat down for a half hour interview talking about airlines we lost last year… and other assorted things.
OAK has always been overrated, especially for JetBlue’s target passenger on transcon flights. The business demand is all for destinations on the west side of the Bay, from SF to San Jose, and getting there from OAK is time-consuming and unpleasant. Everyone always anticipates that there will be more startup growth in Oakland, but it has never really materialized.
You can get some originating business traffic from employees of SF and SV companies that live in East Bay, but that’s a small slice of total traffic, and the execs who are going to buy Mint seats can all afford to live closer to work.
SJC and (especially) SFO will always command a fare premium, so OAK only makes sense if the operational cost difference is huge, or if it’s literally impossible to get gates at business-friendly times at the other airports.
Hard to think this isn’t the beginning of the end for B6 at LGB
B6 has been growing and shrinking their presence at LGB for years. It’s still their largest west coast presence so I doubt they are going anywhere.
They’ve kept it steady for years to protect their slots. This is a massive reduction in service. I’m sure Brett will let us know what he thinks but j think it’s the beginning of the end of intra-West service, that all of their West coast stations will essentially be dots on the map with service to JFK, BOS and maybe a few other cherry picked routes.
Being that LGB is 21 miles from SNA, 20 miles from LAX, 39 miles from BUR and 51 miles from ONT its no big loss. LGB is a minor league airport trying to masquerade as something more than it is.
So JetBlue is dropping LGB destinations where it competes with Southwest. Which, of course, will free up gates for Southwest to expand. What’s next for Southwest at LGB, then? SFO? Pacific Northwest? Phoenix?
I got IM from someone that was pretty sure these cuts are because slot usage needs at JFK. Apparently because a lot of Jetblue flights are at hours with no slot restriction, they were sitting on a bunch of slots that Port Authority said need to be used or they would lose them. They downgauged some JFK-FLL/MCO to use up more slots this summer. And added a bunch of last minute flights out of JFK. You need those planes from somewhere, so they subtracted from the worst performing stations, which are LGB, OAK, HAV and some FLL island routes.
Does spirit airlines is planning to fly to sti (Santiago) Dominican Republic airport doing day time? I’m tire of wasting my beautiful sleeping time at the airport?