The way JetBlue tells it, Los Angeles remains an important focus city and a crew base, but this week’s big cuts in LA starting for travel starting June 13 suggest otherwise. After nearly 23 years, JetBlue is finally giving up on making something on the West Coast a key focus city. Its last attempt, LAX, will now revert to being a spoke on steroids, exactly what it should be.
This week’s changes correspond with a slew of other shifts, including exiting Bogotá, Lima, and Quito along with Kansas City. The airline will also stop pretending that Newburgh/Stewart is just suspended, finally calling it dead and making it that much harder for Americans to visit the Faroe Islands. There is more underlying shifting going on here, but until I get a chance to see the data in Cirium this weekend, it’s hard to understand the full ramifications. But in the LA Basin, there’s no need to wait.
JetBlue first came to the LA area in 2000 when it began flying from New York to Ontario. Then-CEO David Neeleman wanted to build a true focus city in the region, but Ontario wasn’t willing or able to make a deal. Instead, David headed over to Long Beach where he scooped up all the previously-unwanted slots and opened the station in 2001, just before 9/11.
Since 2001, JetBlue has tried so many different ways to make things work in the LA area. None of them — save flying to the airline’s east coast strongholds — have been successful. Charts will help tell the story. Let’s start by looking at departures by destination region.
LA Basin Departing Seats by Destination Region
Data via Cirium
The initial focus was on flying back to JetBlue’s Northeast home, and it did well in the early days. In 2002 the airline opened up intra-West flying, making it a true effort at a focus city. Over the years, the airline waffled between going with higher frequency or into more destinations. In 2017, Long Beach made more slots available, so JetBlue boosted frequencies to try to capture the market. Around that same time, JetBlue began to grow its Florida presence from LAX. This wasn’t a bad idea, but nothing at Long Beach was working.
Prior to the pandemic, JetBlue had hoped to get a customs facility in Long Beach so it could fly to Latin America, but stubborn locals who didn’t understand what was truly at stake blocked the plan from even being considered. JetBlue gave back some slots before the pandemic, and the once the pandemic hit, it just walked away.
If we flip this chart around and look at departing seats by departure airport in the LA Basin, you’ll see that story very clearly.
LA Basin Departing Seats by Airport
Data via Cirium
It was 2009 when JetBlue started at LAX. It had been forced to go there when Virgin America started taking business away from Long Beach with its own LAX service. JetBlue rolled out Mint soon after and created a hit. The service slowly grew into multiple cities along the East Coast. But when the pandemic hit, a switch flipped.
JetBlue’s last flight from Long Beach was in October 2020, and it moved the entire operation to LAX. Its plan was to keep some short-haul flying from the Long Beach operation and add the international routes it never had the chance to fly from Long Beach. That combined with the airline’s robust Northeast operation that already existed was supplemented by some attempts at smaller cities on the other side of the country, like Charleston and Richmond. The idea at the time was to be near 70 flights a day within 5 years.
JetBlue never got to almost half the 70 daily flights, and its intra-West flying was limited to one or maybe 2 flights per day in markets with far greater frequency on many other airlines. This wasn’t working. Meanwhile, both Burbank and Ontario were simply spokes connecting to JFK after a few minor attempts at trying other cities. Long Beach was a distant memory.
The entire LA Basin focus city strategy was predicated on buying Spirit and growing its presence… to still be a distant sixth place. I have no idea where the airline thought it could actually add more flying profitably. With the Spirit merger dead, JetBlue is doing what it should have done long ago. It will exit the entire intra-West network with rare exception.
It was already a shell of its former self with few flights in the remaining markets, including Seattle which hadn’t seen service since last year. But here’s how this week’s changes look on a map:
JetBlue LAX Map generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.
Blue remains, red is exited
Outside of flying to the Northeast and Florida, the only routes that remain are a single daily flight to Los Cabos and another to Salt Lake City. (Yes, the seasonal, weekly flight to Nassau isn’t technically in Florida either, but it’s close… also, that’s really about utilizing Mint airplanes on the weekend when they don’t have much else to do.)
Looking at a random Monday in July, the bread-and-butter remains the East Coast flying using the Mint fleet. There are 10x to JFK, 5x to Boston, and 3x each to Fort Lauderdale and Newark. These flights all make sense within the context of JetBlue’s network.
The rest of the remaining LA flying is on the A320. One flight comes in at night from Buffalo and turns back around as a redeye. JetBlue has had this flight in the market for ages, and I just assume it’s some kind of payback to New York’s political delegation for supporting JetBlue getting started all those years ago. But it is utilization flying anyway, so it doesn’t need much revenue to be ok.
There are also two other A320 markets with the same basic flight times, but the airplanes appear to switch. An A320 comes in from Hartford in the evening and then turns back to Orlando on a redeye. Then another A320 comes in from Orlando in the evening and overnights. The next day it does a morning roundtrip to Cabo and then an afternoon roundtrip to Salt Lake City before flying to Hartford on the redeye.
And that is now the entire operation. The natural thought is that this would be the end of the crew base that opened so long ago, but that’s not happening, at least not yet. JetBlue tells me, “Base staffing is not expected to change for Flight Ops or Inflight. LAX remains one of our six focus cities with a primary focus on transcontinental routes.”
Ok, and maybe that makes sense from a crew scheduling perspective. I don’t know for sure. But I’d say growth opportunities are going to be pretty slim unless they’re multi-day trips that just stay on the East Coast for awhile before heading back. Maybe there’s another shoe to drop here, or maybe not.
This is exactly the kind of change that I’d hoped we’d see under new leadership. JetBlue should not have been wasting its resources on this LA operation when it never had any hope of being relevant. Now it can put those airplanes somewhere else where there’s far more value to the airline.
This week’s episode of The Air Show podcast is a more in-depth look at some of JetBlue’s strategic issues. It goes live sometime today, March 21, so make sure you’re subscribed using your favorite podcast app. If you’re not subscribed… well get on it…
72 comments on “JetBlue’s Long-Desired West Coast Focus City Dream Dies in June”
How long until Alaska makes an offer?
Probably would have already happened if they weren’t busy with HA.
It would be Continental/United all over again.
Just because the route network looks good on paper doesn’t mean the execution will go well, even if the superior management remains in charge.
Perhaps, but just because the Continental/ United merger went awry doesn’t mean that Alaska/ JetBlue will do the same.
United + Continental – that is today’s combined United Airlines – is a very strong, profitable airline. I wouldn’t characterize that merger as being bad by any stretch of the imagination at this point, even if the integration had its hiccups.
It wasn’t until Munoz came aboard in 2015 that United started to fix its issues. Remember that disaster?
UAL still underperforms DAL thanks to Smisek induced decisions, particularly the shrinking of the domestic network that is taking years to rectify.
FLL/JFK/BOS/MCO doesn’t complement Alaska’s West Coast network in any way. It just gives them more far flung routes in a far away land.
A220
Are you 100% sure that Smisek’s decisions are the main reason why United “underperforms” Delta? Among other factors, United has more competition in its primary hubs than Delta does. Or, maybe … as Tim Dunn suggests, Delta is the world’s only PERFECT airline and is inherently superior to all others. LOL I’m not sure what this has to do with JetBlue, except to observe that the airline is pretty much doing what needs to be done – as other companies usually do when there are unprofitable parts of the enterprise that can be removed without damaging the whole.
I don’t want to go off topic and summon Tim Dunn but,
I don’t mean they “underperform” as in the Tim Dunn sense, I mean that as in they could be doing better
United still does great financially. Very profitable airline that will get more profitable over time as United Next takes shape.
I honestly think they’ll outperform Delta eventually. (Cue Tim Dunn is 3…2..1..)
United underperforms Delta because CO chose to build its network around its hub cities using RJs and had minimal share in spoke cities. At the time of the merger, UA adopted – via CO mgmt – the mindset that spoke cities don’t matter because their hubs are so great.
UA also became addicted to the mindset that international was the end all and be all and yet Delta’s real revenue advantage comes from its Amex relationship; Amex draws a higher income crowd than Visa, charges higher interchange fees which means more revenue that can be split, and DL’s much larger domestic network puts more and richer cardholders in Amex’ fold.
The card revenue benefit and potential for UA’s current network is far lower than for DL’s which is built around domestic with a healthy and profitable international network added on and not the other way around.
The refinery cuts DL’s costs by a billion plus dollars per year compared to AA and UA while DL’s non-union mechanics allow it to go after maintenance contracts which are not consistent – so rely on retired contract mechanics to help staff for the ebb and flow of contract maintenance on top of DL’s own needs.
UA’s current execs understand these dynamics and can fix the network-related ones even if they cannot fix the fuel cost issue even though they tried to be a refinery. A unionized labor force just doesn’t support large contract operations for other carriers.
DL has the best network balance between small and large domestic systems, a large presence in major coastal markets and strong interior hubs and international – which is the biggest growth potential for DL – in part because of its equity investments in foreign carriers.
some of these same principles apply to B6 and no one should forget that B6′ largest and most direct competitor is DL.
B6 could have made LGB work as a strong domestic niche hub but they blew the execution of that, fell out of favor w/ their neighbors and couldn’t deal w/ the much more competitive environment at LAX.
In a comment about JetBlue, you mention Delta 8 times and JetBlue 3 times. Why don’t you go start your own blog that provides nothing but wall-to-wall coverage of Delta everyday?
Anthony,
there are more references to JetBlue in my post than in every other post above mine.
The theme that everyone wanted to talk about is trying to pick B6 apart and/or compare other mergers.
Thank you, I don’t get the failed merger narrative (or the AS-Virgin one either). Sure, they had some rough times, but they are one of the remaining 3 large legacies. I don’t see how that would give Bern possible without the merger. No merger woukd have ment a very differnt environment. Who knows what would have happened, but things would look very different now.
Alaska is smart enough to know that the DOJ wouldn’t allow it.
It’s the only consolidation possibility left without overlap
So? There’s nothing saying that airlines have to consolidate.
Don’t overestimate the copetence of Alaska’s management. They’re engaging with Avelo in a turf war for *checks notes* Santa Rosa
Battling Avelo in STS is exactly what they should be doing imo. When you take care of the little things then the big things tend to take care of themselves. Taking the mindset that some problems are “too small” to focus on ends up leading down a bad path from my experience
STS is a small spoke in Alaska’s network and Avelo is growing into markets that AS doesn’t serve. If Avelo added STS – SEA/PDX, then its time to respond. Alaska is currently without a network strategy just chasing shiny objects and engaging in unnecessary turf wars. They could be focused on growing SAN, but they’d rather waste resources on other nonsense.
Anthony, If you don’t fight to protect the markets you have an advantage in, what do you fight for? Are you suggesting AS should shrink to be just a SEA/PDX airline?
STS may not be a hub, but it’s a wealthy market where AS already is the market share leader. Why would they let that slip away
How does LAX allocate gates? Does jetBlue own them, and would they then sell them? Alaska seems like a natural taker for some of them if they have the stomach to grow in LAX, they do have the adjacent gates after all.
Given how much competition is on the vacated routes I have to imagine the remaining airlines won’t backfill, but instead just take the slight revenue bump from the reduced competition.
Aielines don’t own the gates at LAX. LAX is moving to a preferred use system of gate assignments. AS shouldn’t need any more gates, yet,. Once all of the T6 gate come back online AS should have preferred use of 13 of the 15 gate.
Why are they keeping SLC?
There are long-standing ties for B6 in Utah dating back to the Neeleman days.
Probably lingering Neelman business connections. Remember Morris Air was out of SLC, and Neelman’s current venture Breeze is HQ’d in SLC. So there’s a natural affinity for JetBlue with SLC, even though Neelman moved on years ago.
I believe they have some corporate offices in SLC
Aliqiout – It’s an odd one. They are dropping SLC from Florida, but this one flight remains. It also turns on itself, so it’s not like it’s flowing through to the east coast. There must be some reason why this needed to stay.
Playing to ther support center crowd. Their SLC reservation folks love Disneyland. There was uproar when they shifted from LGB to LAX. There are a handful of routes B6 flies for similar reasons. JFK-GEO is another example.
Perhaps a perk to the large support (reservations) staff in the SLC area. Their friends/family are loyal revenue customers and the staff has a non-rev option. At one point Southwest had 3 nonstops SLCLAX, now they have 1 SLCLAX, 2 SLCLGB, and 1 SLCBUR. AA was briefly in the market with regional jets. UA has a couple regional flights.
AA is still in the market, seasonally. They fly a couple RJs a day during ski season-ish. Flights run December through May, approximately.
Thanks – I missed it.
B6 has a significant reservation, crew, and IT support office in Cottonwood Heights. So a SLC flight connection will not go anywhere unless that presence diminishes.
Long overdue. The onesy, twosy flights on routes that have 10x or more on other carriers made no sense whatsoever. Surprised to see they pulled LAX-MIA though considering they had a unique, premium product in mint and the AA service is frequent but usually dreadful.
It made sense to pull it though because JetBlue already has the premium transcon service out of its FLL hub. Not much point in competing with AA’s frequencies/network (connectivity on both ends if you include AS).
Didn’t realize they ran the mint service to FLL as well. Makes more sense now. Not that they needed my approval lol.
As you mentioned: Kind of incredible that a BuffaloLAX flight can survive… but also amazed that nothing was moved from LAX to the entire Phoenix area. Id think that some of those Caribbean and Central America markets (example: MLRB/LIR) could make money from Phoenix, since noone serves that route nonstop right now, and the most of the existing connecting options KPHXMLRB are pretty awfully timed (redeyes or quasi redeyes in both directions).
Going off DoT data, B6 (20% market share) pulls in average fares of $250, below the average of $293 for a market that has a PDEW of 453.
So it has to be political or strategic reasons. Any route can survive thanks to those excuses
I do believe JetBlue serves the Upstate New York cities (Buffalo/Rochester/Syracuse) in part to maintain favor with politicians for gaining/keeping their JFK slots. It keeps Delta or United from having de facto monopolies on any notable route within the Northeast.
It might keep Delta from having a monopoly, but the down side is that Delta has shifted a lot of their connections to LGA and JFK for those upstate cities. I would much rather connect in ATL or DTW than the NYC airports, however Delta has made much harder to do.
There’s also probably enough O&D/VFR traffic for a handful of flights per day between Upstate New York and either LGA/JFK (Delta) or EWR (United) to work regardless.
Yeah, connections form most places west of DFW to the Caribbean are very difficult, you woukd think AA could do a better job. Europe usually takes about the same amount of time and is comparable in price for me.
Demand for west coast to the caribbean is non-existant. It’s why B6 and AS are burnign cash flying west coast to NAS
I don’t know about B6, but AS isn’t burning money (and NAS isn’t the Caribbean)
I ams not sure what your definition of minuscule is. Part.of the problem is how difficult it is to get there. Notice also, I was talking about connections not direct flights…although I think LAX-SJU would be a great route for AS if rhey had a longer range narrow body.
AS is starting ANC-JFK in the summer, which (coincidentally) is the exact same distance as LAX-SJU.
LAX-SJU is one example of a route which would probably do well since it’s a ~150 PDEW unstimulated market. West coast leisure demand skews heavily to Hawaii and Mexico rather than the Bahamas/Caribbean.
AA has two issues with the Caribbean. First, they would rather not overnight the planes and crews there, as it’s very expensive in season. Second, since crews can only fly 10 hours in a day now, that makes it more difficult to do a turn.
They can do it from Miami and Charlotte, but from only the western Caribbean works.
It’s just not all that economical for
DFW. They have to either overnight crews or dead head them.
I’ve taken this flight before and it was usually half-full of Canadians looking to avoid Canada’s expensive airfare taxes. It’s not surprising that average fares are below market, but I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. If this crowd is going to drive from GTA to BUF to save money, they’re going to expect a low fare to justify the drive over just taking AC. So, JetBlue likely looks at this and decides this flight can turn a slight profit using a plane that would otherwise sit idle overnight in Buffalo, maybe help rotate in/out of a base and curry some political favor. Seems worth sticking around.
Phoenix needs a SJO or LIR flight.
Its maddening.
I’d settle for a COPA flight.
Possible you uploaded the wrong image for the first graph (LA Basin Departing Seats by Destination Region)? I’m seeing the graph on Avelo profitability from a few posts back.
James – What on earth. This is the second time it has done this in the last week. It shows up perfectly right in the editor, but then it’s different when published. I think it’s fixed now, but I don’t know what’s going on.
Yep, looks good now! Hope you get the tech issue figured out
If JetBlue focused on the business, instead of DEI crap, business partners and putting money anywhere other than the board’s pockets, they might have had a chance. Any bets on how long it is before the CEO is booted? Icahn’s involvement is the end of jetblue.
Re crew, I’d assume they’ll support a decent chunk of the Mint operations still from the west coast. Those FAs are a separate work group from what I recall and they typically work one way, overnight, and then a return to base. With the Mint ops not cut many of the crew can remain busy.
Though I’d also expect to see some attrition over time that is not backfilled.
It would have been so much easier if B6 had simply run a reliable operation at LGB, not tried to go international (but that might have happened if the neighbors actually liked B6), and LAX should have been a large spoke as it is now.
The failure was their operation which brought an end to what could have been a very good domestic niche operation; the consequence is that they can’t compete in a much larger and competitive LAX.
If you do a demographic study of the LA area, you’ll see that LGB is in a dead spot. It’s a bad place for a one-and-only LA Basin base. The people to whom you provide the most value in terms of convenience are not all that wealthy.
It works a lot better for WN, apparently, which I would put down to (1) their huge LA-basin presence. LGB complements WN’s presence everywhere else – it’s mutually reinforcing. (2) LGB is physically nicer than it was back when JetBlue first started there. I always thought it was charming, I never minded the informal nature, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea (3) WN has way more slots than B6 managed due to (a) most other airlines getting the heck out and (b) an increase in slots as noise per aircraft diminishes given better engine technology. o WN gets to fly more flights and have better schedules than B6 ever did. And don’t forget (4) – in 20 years, roads and airports have only gotten more congested. S
And so then the intrinsic benefits of LGB come to the fore – the fact that you get in/out of LGB far faster than LAX and that it’s actually decently convenient for a lot of that side of the basin. In other words, WN at LGB today and B6 at LBG 10-20 years ago are two different things.
LGB is a niche airport; B6 is a niche west coast carrier. The two could have worked well together w/o trying to think beyond what either is capable of being.
JT8D – Agree with everything you said. The one thing I would add, however, is that LGB was never going to work for JetBlue back then nor would it work today. Unlike something another commenter said, I don’t think it had anything to do with execution. There were not enough slots at LGB to become relevant enough to attract enough revenue and traffic. Southwest’s strategy I didn’t believe would work, but they have proven me wrong. Their idea is that they can serve all the cities that matter for short-haul plus some midcon which connects easily throughout the eastern network. If people don’t want to connect, they can easily drive to LAX to find nonstop options. They may have some in Orange County too. It’s a completely different offer than anything JetBlue ever could have provided.
I’ll second Cranky on this. LGB works far better for SWA because they can plug into a far more comprehensive network and get people pretty much anywhere in the country out of LGB thru connections at LAS, PHX, DEN, HOU, DAL, and elsewhere. JetBlue could never offer that. SNA’s stupid hardcap also keeps pushing out SWA, so they’re using LGB as a reliever for OC demand – and it’s cheaper too.
That and the massive base of WN loyalists in the LA basin thanks to frequency of intra Cali service. B6 never would have had that.
It is precisely because LGB has so few slots that WN could not have built what they now have if B6 still had an operation at LGB.
WN, like the big 3, has the advantage of having multiple hubs that can connect throughout the country. The big 4, therefore, should have an advantage in any city where they serve the regional point to point markets as well as connect to their hubs – and that would be the case in a market like LGB that has limited number of flights.
WN frequently succeeds best when it can dominate markets. They only added what they did when they were able to create at LGB what they have at many other LA satellite airports – a substantial schedule advantage over every other competitor.
B6 succeeded very well at all it did for many years; the LGB operation undoubtedly did as well.
It is impossible to say w/ certainty what caused the downfall of LGB but there are some common themes between B6 at LGB and B6 overall -and the largest is that they tried to bite off more than they could chew. But WN could not and did not do what it did at LGB until B6 pulled down B6 as a focus city/hub.
As an OC resident, I enjoyed B6s JFK-LGB flight. I could get in and out of LGB much quicker than LAX and had to deal with less traffic. I could also fly BOS-LGB. Now I use AAs non stop JFK-SNA flight. If AA and UA can make SNA work with a small number of gates, B6 should have abe able to make LGB work with its 6 gates.
Again, similar to SWA at LGB, UA and AA can make a few gates at SNA work because most of their flights plug into very large mid-continent hubs that connect to pretty much every major destination in the country. B6 does not have that.
best case for Alaska is to stay far, far away. No reason in purchasing a hot mess… if B6 digs themselves out this hole leaner and more profitable then maybe worth a look
I learned about this when JetBlue informed me in a flight cancellation email that the last day they were flying to Reno is two days before I was scheduled to.
We can all speculate about what went wrong with JetBlue in Los Angeles/Long Beach, but do we really know all of the facts? It seems to me, as someone who has been the CEO of exactly zero airlines, that JetBlue is taking the step airlines normally take when they run into economic difficulty – cut back to the profitable core. Cutting the airline down to a more manageable size tends to result in more reliable operations. And as more than one airline executive (all of whom have had vastly more experience than me) has observed, running a reliable airline is more cost effective than running one that isn’t.
Hi Brett- Thanks for this great post! I agree that the company is taking the proper steps to turn things around. Yesterday, on an internal call, they were asked if the company would consider approaching Alaska for a codeshare. They stated very clearly that they are not able to do that because of the CBAs SCOPE clauses with the unions that prevent them from code sharing with any airline that is bigger than Jetblue, which Alaska is slightly, as they put it, and that barring an agreement of relief from the unions that is a significant barrier.
I found this interesting because, at present, we have this deep code share with Hawaiian, as they were substantially smaller than Jetblue, and once they get absorbed by Alaska, they can no longer keep the codeshare. The unions have made this clear, as I understand it, and the company is aware of this, too. I know some will mention the NEA, but remember that the NEA violated the CBA, which the company didn’t deny. It went to arbitration, and before the arbitrator ruled, management settled with the union that allowed them to continue with AA, but that’s it. They agreed not to violate that SCOPE clause again with anyone.
This leads me to my next question: Do you think Jetblue should try to fly to Hawaii from LAX, considering their Hawaiian deal will likely end if the Alaska acquisition goes through?
CoolBlue – JetBlue should definitely not try to fly from LAX to Hawai?i.
That is a route with ample service and no need for JetBlue to bother because it won’t make money except for possibly a short time during the summer peak. Maybe. It would have been much more interesting had JetBlue done it from Long Beach years ago, but now that’s well served by Hawaiian and Southwest.
The weird thing about the fetishization of a B6 west coast presence is that Alaska has basically zero east coast presence. So, Alaska’s far greater success occurs without an opposite coast presence. So why does B6 need a west coast presence? Answer, it doesn’t.
Pre-Covid there was apparently a strong desire within B6 to not dump its LGB employees. OK, I get that, but to do right by your employees does not require that they have a lifetime job in their favored geography. You offer everyone the opportunity to move east or take a nice package. That’s all JetBlue ever needed to do.
Even now, apparently, B6 is shy of calling a spade a spade and dumping the west coast ops base. The odd thing is if they really gave a sh*t about their corporate culture, they’d never in a million years have pursued the Spirit merger. That was far more of a violation of employee trust than dumping the LGB base ever could be.
But look at the bright side – good things are happening at JetBlue. (1) return of Marty St George (this says really good things about Joanna, especially that she’s not threatened by MSG) (2) ditching the merger appeal (3) cutting the west coast.
We’re seeing good decisions being made without delay. If they wanted to demonstrate to the troops that the Hayes era is dead and buried and that sh*t’s going to be different, they’re going about it the right way. I’d assume there will be a morale boost just based on that.
Presumably we’ll see the assets reallocated to the east to shore-up B6’s position in Boston.
One thing AS has that B6 doesn’t is a partnership with east coast coverage. It doesn’t attract many east coast frequent flyers, but it allows them a way to meet their west coast costumers’ needs on the east coast.
I went through the comments, but I didn’t see anyone mention WN purchasing JetBlue. My contacts at Southwest are pointing to this as the reason why they are quickly closing contact negotiations with their unions. They are also pointing to the recent changes within the Southwest pilots union. They are currently mediating on future seniority integrations, and to allow for a diverse airline fleet. It makes sense that Southwest would take this on considering their concern with the amount of aircraft Boeing can deliver, and their weaknesses in the New York market. Thoughts?
Do you think FAs only working these short hauls will transfer to these routes? Are they planning layoffs at all?
Alice – I have no idea how they’ll build their new lines, but obviously with almost no short-haul flying, the LA base will have to do much more long-haul. No layoffs have been announced, and I doubt they’d do it.
Worst case, it would require a transfer if they shrink the base size.
B6 might as well call itself Eastern Airlines or New York airlines.
Look at a flghtaware map at any time, and all the B6 flights are clustered along the east coast and the Caribbean with a few slots across the North Atlantic. LAX was an opportunity lost.
Waiting for a buyout should Trump win and a bankruptcy should Biden win.
I’ll cash in my TrueBlue points before the end of the year!!