Cranky Weekly Review Presented by Oakland International Airport: JetBlue Adjusts Schedule, Frontier Adjusts Name

Win Some, Lost Some: JetBlue Gets Mintier, Drops More from NYC

JetBlue Airways is making route map swaps, as the carrier announced increased service to the Caribbean and it certified three new destinations as Minty Fresh. San Juan is the beneificary of the bulk of the new flights, as the airport will see new daily JetBlue service to Providence, Santiago (DR), and White Plains. It’s also adding sub-daily flights to Cancún and Medellín and resuming flights to St. Croix for the first time since 2019.

As for its premium Mint product, JetBlue will begin deploying aircraft with the premium cabins on service to Phoenix, San Juan, and Vancouver. New York/JFK to both San Juan and Vancouver will see year-round Minty flights on A321 aircraft, while all three of JetBlue’s routes to Phoenix (Boston, Fort Lauderdale, New York/JFK) will see seasonal Mint service during the winter only — peppermint perhaps? — with FLL – Las Vegas also getting winter-only Mint. Where are these planes coming from? LA – Newark gets the axe and European flying gets chopped down in winter.

JetBlue is also adding two new Caribbean destinations from JFK — St. Vincent and Bonaire — both of which will begin at a time TBA. Buried in the bottom of JetBlue’s release is the reduction of service its making at New York/LGA, marking more fallout from the dissolution of the Northeast Alliance. Three destinations are seeing reduced frequencies: Boston, Fort Lauderdale, and Orlando, while five cities are going away from LGA on JetBlue: Atlanta, Fort Myers, New Orleans, Nassau, and Tampa.

Regular B6 fliers on these routes will rest assured knowing that other carriers fly between NYC and those markets — especially Atlanta, Fort Myers, and Tampa — about 800 times a day.

What’s In a Name? Frontier Brings Back Codeshare

Frontier’s codeshare with Mexican LCC Volaris is back — with customers able to book through the codeshare for travel beginning May 16. The two first began partnering in 2018 but were forced to end the agreement in 2021 when the FAA downgraded Mexico’s safety status to Category 2. It was restored back to Category 1 late last year, opening the window for the two to team up again.

In potentially unrelated news, Frontier also registered a new name with the FAA, as the carrier secured the rights to use the name “Frontera” for some of its operations. For those of you not as savvy as others when it comes to espanol, Frontera is as close as you get in Spanish to…wait for it…Frontier. Now, Cinco de Mayo was earlier this week (then again, so was Seis de Mayo, Siete de Mayo, you get the point…) so maybe Frontier just had one too many margaritas on Sunday at Tortas Frontera at O’Hare and got ahead of itself.

Spirit Down $207 Million for Q1

Spirit’s Q1 earnings showed a rough start to the year for the carrier, as it posted an operating loss of $207 million on $1.26 billion in gross revenue.

The good news for Spirit from the year’s first three months include a 98.7% completion factor, it increased capacity by 2.1% from last year, and its planes are still yellow. The $1.2 billion in revenue is a 6% drop from a year ago, and its TRASM took a hit of nearly 10 cents, while fare revenue was down to just $48 per segment, a whopping 16% less than last year.

The carrier did receive a very nice $69 million payment from JetBlue as part of the termination of the merger agreement between the two and scored $99 million on sale-and-leaseback transactions on five airplanes. But its issues with engines and airplanes persisted, leaving it with $1.2 billion in cash at the end of the quarter. For more on Spirit’s fiscal uncertainty, please visit yesterday’s post on crankyflier.com.

Qantas Roos the Day it Tricked Customers in Consumer Settlement

Qantas settled its case with the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (that’s Australian for ACCC) for A$120 million in penalties and compensation. As part of the settlement, the carrier admitted both that it advertised and sold tickets on flights it knew had been canceled and that no one actually likes the taste of Vegemite.

The carrier will pay A$100 million in fines to the ACCC, and A$20 million in compensation to the 86,000 customers who bought the ghost tickets. Domestic ticket holders will receive A$225, with international ticket holders receiving A$450 — the compensation comes on top of previous remedies including refunds, alternative flights, and an offer to safely dispose of any Vegemite from the homes of the affected customers.

Qantas says only 6% of the affected passengers were flying international routes and a vast majority of both domestic and international customers were offered alternative flights within three hours of their departure time (domestic) or 12 hours (international).

Union Vote is a Breeze

Flight attendants at Breeze Airways voted by a 76-24 margin in favor of unionizing in an election to join the Association of Flight Attendants. The vote was certified earlier this week, with the vote itself coming just two weeks after the FAs at the carrier announced their campaign.

The carrier said the result was “not the outcome” it had hoped for, but that it will work alongside the union and its FAs to continue to grow the young airline.

There are about 650 flight attendants currently employed at Breeze, and their gripes with the carrier include low pay, not enough hours to work, unhappiness with hotels during layovers, and the insistence of the airline to keep one window in the cabin cracked during flight to ensure there’s always a breeze blowing.

• Aer Lingus is out as the A321XLR launch customer.
• Air Canada is growing its B737-8 MAX fleet.
• Air India reminds us never to choose the fish.
• Air Vanuatu entered voluntary administration.
• Alaska expects a ruling on its takeover of Hawaiian by the end of the summer.
• Blue Air owes the Romanian government $41 million worth of green.
• Bonza is not going away quietly.
• British Airways has strong demand for the summer according to British Airways.
• Delta unveiled its Team USA livery aircraft last week. Olympians can fly this specific A350 to Paris for the summer games for the low, low, price of just one million SkyMiles.
• Emirates A350 service will debut on September 15 to Bahrain.
• Etihad customers can now earn and burn on JetBlue — and vice versa.
• EVA is increasing its service to Seattle from 7x to 10x weekly this summer.
• GhanaAirlines, which you’ve definitely never heard of, hit a setback.
• HK Express will begin charging for carry-ons this week.
• IndiGo went ahead and ordered 30 A350.
• JetBlue is giving some senior airplanes a reason to keep working later in life.
• Kenya Airways is flying to the Congo again.
• LOT purchased a lot of E195-E2s. Three to be exact.
• Lufthansa named Till Streichert its new CFO. Unconfirmed reports say that Streichert was selected for the role over other worthy candidates including Cash Register Helmüt and Adding Machine Strügart.
• Nolinor Aviation is planning to base one B737-200 in Edmonton beginning this summer.
• Sky has an interesting way to showing it cares for its customers.
• Southwest‘s former president Colleen Barrett passed away Thursday at 79.
• Sun Country turned a profit in Q1 on a company record $312 million in gross revenue.
• Sunrise Airways is growing.
• Thai will exit restructuring later this year.
• TUI will operate 1x weekly flights between Dublin and Melbourne (FL) for a month next summer.