I’m back! I know at least some of you missed me, but I’m going to admit to cheating a little today. See, we were in Europe for two weeks with the kids, so I put this post together before we left to give me an extra buffer coming home. So, enjoy this and I’ll have more current stuff starting tomorrow.
JetBlue has finally decided to give up on the West Coast. Its new plan says it will focus on leisure travelers along the East Coast, and that has always been where it has done best. But this isn’t to say that the airline didn’t try, try, and try again to make the West Coast work over the years. It never did, but let’s take a look back at all those efforts.
In the Beginning
It wasn’t all that long after JetBlue started flying that it began pointing its planes west. Its first flight to the coast was in July 2000 from JFK to Ontario, followed in August by JFK to Oakland. Those began as 1x daily but made it to 2x daily each by summer 2001 when Seattle also joined in at 1x daily.
At this point, all the flights to the West Coast were there to create options for New Yorkers as the airline grew into the slotholdings it had been gifted there. CEO David Neeleman had plans to turn these airports into something more, but in Ontario, it was unable to get the deal it needed. It looked down to Long Beach.
The LGB and OAK Focus Cities Go Long
In late August 2001, JetBlue started with 2x daily from JFK to Long Beach. The airline had scooped up the remaining available slots in Long Beach and was ready to use them. Of course, 9/11 happened shortly after service began, but that was not going to stop JetBlue.
Initially, service focused on long-haul. By summer 2002, JFK – Long Beach had jumped to 4x daily, and 2x daily was introduced from Washington/Dulles to both Long Beach and Oakland.
In September 2002, the first short-haul routes were introduced along the West Coast. Fittingly, the first was to connect the two focus cities in Long Beach and Oakland with huge frequency, more than 7x daily. Long Beach – Las Vegas followed soon after with 3x daily with Salt Lake at 1x daily.
By summer of 2003, Long Beach had become the place to be for flights to JFK. There were 7x daily operating that summer as people came from all over the LA area to fly to New York and take advantage of the low fares, live TV, and good legroom that weren’t available anywhere else. This frequency continued for the next couple years, peaking at 8x daily in summer 2005.
July 2005 JetBlue West Coast Route Map
Data via Cirium
During this time, JetBlue slowly expanded into its LGB slotholdings, but not everything worked. It took a chance on flying from Atlanta to both Long Beach and Oakland in 2003, but those were quickly killed. Fort Lauderdale came around at the same time from Long Beach, and that had more staying power.
By 2004, we saw the rise of Boston with both Long Beach and Oakland flights beginning at 2x daily, going up to 3x by summer 2005.
Outside the two focus cities, additional West Coast markets got East Coast flying, including Burbank, Las Vegas, Portland (OR), San Diego, San Jose, and Sacramento.
By the summer of 2006, JetBlue had added Long Beach – Sacramento, but these were more opportunistic routes as opposed to a key part of the strategy. Long-haul still ruled, but that would change quickly.
Virgin America Ruins Everything
Virgin America started flying in the summer of 2007 with its fancy purple mood-lighting, low fares, TVs, and a generally-cool vibe. That was all well and good, but the real problem for JetBlue was that it was flying from the primary airports of LAX and SFO to JFK. All of a sudden, those alternate airports weren’t looking as good.
JetBlue tried to get ahead of the threat by starting its own SFO – JFK and Boston flights, but in LA it held strong on Long Beach. It may not have realized just how much this would hurt. At 8x daily, JetBlue already had too much frequency from Long Beach to JFK, but it would drop only to 6x daily in summer 2007 and 5x daily in 2008.
By the end of the summer of 2008, JetBlue had left Ontario entirely and pulled Burbank back down to only flying JFK and inexplicably 1x daily Las Vegas after trying things as varied as Orlando, Salt Lake, and Washington/Dulles. In Long Beach, with frequency down, it had to come up with a new strategy. It opted to shift the airport’s focus to short-haul.
Short-Haul Ramps Up
The short-haul growth from Long Beach actually started in May 2008 when JetBlue added 3x daily to San Jose, 2x daily to Seattle, and 1x daily to Austin. At the end of the summer, Portland (OR) started at 2x daily with SFO at 3x daily.
July 2009 JetBlue West Coast Route Map
Data via Cirium
That next summer in 2009, JFK saw only 3x daily with Boston at 2x daily, but that was also the summer that JetBlue realized it needed to be at LAX. It started from there with 2x daily each to Boston and JFK. The balance of power had shifted, but JetBlue hoped short-haul in Long Beach would work.
It wouldn’t.
San Jose was an immediate failure, and JetBlue moved those frequencies to SFO. It proved to be too much and didn’t last long at that level. Yet the pressure to figure out a workable plan continued to increase.
JFK had jumped to 4x daily from LAX by summer 2010 and LGB had dipped down to less than 2x daily. Long Beach – Fort Lauderdale moved to LAX too. that meant there were more slots that need to be used elsewhere, so short-haul had to carry the burden.
This wasn’t just a Long Beach problem. Much of the intra-west flying from Salt Lake was gone, and even Oakland – Boston went summer-seasonal. JetBlue was forced to go bigger in markets like Las Vegas where the distance was short and demand was generally good. It was a way to lose less money, but it wasn’t a winning strategy.
A Series of Small Cuts
Over time, things just didn’t work out, but not a grand scale. Long Beach – Chicago ended in June 2012, Burbank – Las Vegas finally died in January 2013. And in summer 2014, the end came for Washington/Dulles. That wasn’t about the West Coast so much. After that point, service stuck around only to JFK and Boston from Dulles before it was exited completely in 2019.
The year 2014 also brought the introduction of the Mint business class cabin. That, however, was only in LAX and San Francisco, not Long Beach or Oakland.
Each cut put additional pressure on JetBlue to figure out how to use the slots in Long Beach. It took advantage of an airport rule allowing airlines to squat on slots and not use them fully. It just had to reach a certain threshold. The problem with this strategy was that other airlines could step in and use those slots during the time JetBlue wasn’t using them. And that’s when the long beginning of the end arrived.
Southwest Comes to Long Beach
In June 2016, Southwest landed its first airplane in Long Beach. It started with Oakland and soon added Las Vegas. But it couldn’t grow more than that, because JetBlue controlled the lion’s share of slots.
JetBlue could have caved and walked away, but instead, it doubled down and decided to fight. It ramped up utilization to keep Southwest at bay, and it picked up more slots as the airport was able to add more due to lower noise coming from the quieter, more modern aircraft flying at the airport.
In August 2016, JetBlue added Reno while San Jose came back in January 2017. Fort Lauderdale even returned in May 2017. Meanwhile, frequencies spiked in others markets like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.
This big increase in capacity did not work, to the surprise of nobody, including JetBlue itself.
Looking International
JetBlue couldn’t compete with Southwest, so it figured it could keep up flying those slots until it could put a new plan into place. It tried to make an effort to get a customs facility in Long Beach. It figured with that, it could begin flying to Mexican and Central American beach destinations where it could make more money. Local politics ended that.
The mininformation and rhetoric from the anti-airport crowd was fierce. They had convinced enough residents in Long Beach of the laughable idea that there would be A380s flying to China that pressure mounted. In 2017, the Long Beach City Council voted against even continuing to study the idea. The plan was dead.
With no hope of flying internationally, JetBlue got weird. It tried to find a niche where there was some demand for its product. Fort Lauderdale went away in January 2018, but Steamboat Springs and Bozeman joined the network with 2x weekly seasonal service. This was a hail mary.
At this point, JetBlue had tried to make the West Coast a destination from the East Coast again with the return of Ontario from JFK in September 2018 and an increasingly lengthy winter season to Palm Springs. Long Beach had no real future since it was an origin.
As slots continued to be added at the airport, Southwest kept growing and JetBlue kept failing. Then, the airline found the excuse it apparently felt it needed to walk away.
COVID Hits
When COVID hit, the entire industry disappeared overnight, and JetBlue was forced to finally make some hard decisions.
Oakland disappeared immediately, and JetBlue would never return to the airport. From Long Beach, service limped along with occasional flying to JFK, Reno, and Salt Lake City. A couple others surfaced over time, but they didn’t last long.
Long Beach hadn’t really worked for JetBlue in ages, but now it was too hard to ignore. JetBlue could have just pulled the plug, but instead, it had another hare-brained idea.
JetBlue Moves Up the 405
JetBlue’s Long Beach operation came to an end when flight 231 from Salt Lake City touched down on runway 30 at 11:03am on October 6, 2020. That day, the airline moved its entire operation up the road to LAX.
With LGB still performing horribly, JetBlue took advantage of newly-available gate space at LAX that opened up during the pandemic. Most of the routes from Long Beach moved up to LAX, but the airline tried a whole bunch of new ideas as well.
July 2021 JetBlue West Coast Route Map
Data via Cirium
JetBlue started LAX to Charleston (SC), Hartford, Jacksonville, and Richmond in the “long and thin” market category, several of those getting a shot from Las Vegas as well. It also finally went international from LAX, adding Cancún, Liberia, Los Cabos, San Jose (CR), and later starting Nassau and Puerto Vallarta.
LAX Starts to Unravel
Most of these efforts at LAX failed. Richmond didn’t make it out of 2021. Austin, Bozeman, Raleigh/Durham, San Jose (CR), and Seattle ended before summer 2022. Charleston and Seattle were gone by the end of 2023 with Cancún shortly after.
Those weren’t strategic cuts, however. Those wouldn’t come until JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes was pushed out in February 2024. That’s when the airline finally made the decision that should have been made years before.
The Death of the West, Part 1
The first round of cuts hit in June 2024 at the beginning of the summer. LAX lost most of its short-haul flying with the end of Las Vegas, Liberia, Miami, Puerto Vallarta, Reno, and San Francisco. Orlando was gone by September with Hartford and Newark ending in October.
The only short haul flights left from LAX were Los Cabos and Salt Lake City. It looked more and more like a destination than an origin, but the end was delayed. And other West Coast airports were not to be spared either.
The Death of the West, Part 2
When JetBlue rolled out its winter schedule for 2024, it created a new normal. The airline left Burbank and decided not to come back to Palm Springs for winter. It even suspended JFK – Seattle for winter since that’s when leisure demand is lowest.
From LAX, the last short-haul flights to Los Cabos and Salt Lake City were canceled outright. So what is left?
Here’s the winter plan:
January 2025 JetBlue West Coast Route Map
Data via Cirium
- Boston – Las Vegas (3x daily), Los Angeles (3-5x daily), San Diego (1-2x daily), San Francisco (4x daily), Seattle (1x daily)
- Fort Lauderdale – Las Vegas (2x daily), Los Angeles (4-5x daily), San Diego (1x daily, holidays only), San Francisco (2x daily)
- JFK – Las Vegas (3-5x daily), Los Angeles (7-9x daily), Reno (1x daily, holidays only), San Diego (1-2x daily), San Francisco (5-6x daily)
- Los Angeles – Buffalo (1x daily, holidays only), West Palm Beach (1x daily, winter only)
And that’s it. As you can see, with the exception of a couple of long-haul LA routes, this is all about feeding the airline’s main Boston, Fort Lauderdale, and JFK focus cities.
Presumably, there will be changes to the summer plan, but as of now, here’s what is expected to come back seasonally:
- Boston – Portland (OR), Sacramento, San Jose
- JFK – Ontario, Reno, Sacramento, Seattle
- Los Angeles – Buffalo, Hartford
Again, other than a couple LAX long-hauls, it’s all about the focus cities. And this is really how it should be. The West Coast focus cities are dead, and the flying that remains is meant to serve the focus cities where JetBlue remains strong, in the Northeast and Florida. It was one heck of a run, but now, JetBlue is making smart business decisions.
80 comments on “A Look at JetBlue’s History on the West Coast”
The second WN announced LGB I knew it was do-or-die for B6. They fought, for naught. Plugging LGB into the WN network offered far greater connectivity than B6 could ever hope for. My future telling skills are marginal at best but I called this (on another forum) so allow me to toot my own horn for once.
SWA can make these smaller airports like OAK, BUR, LGB, SMF, etc all work because they have a broader network to tap into. Heck AA failed twice at SJC.
That IntraCal network is impressive and they truly dominate in California.
Comparing WN now to AA then (when it ran a hub operation at SJC) is meaningless. Different times. Different economics but hey, thanks for your usual fluff pieces.
JetBlue in many ways, has repeated the same mistakes that some of its peers have in the past. The company is poorly run, relies on leisure demand and has virtually no corporate business, is an operational mess and always has been (and not just because it flies heavily out of JFK and BOS). As it has pivoted away from its route map to refocus on Florida, Puerto Rico, and Mexico beach markets, it is positioning itself for further failures.
The future of JetBlue is being carved out by the legacy carriers with AA and UA dividing the spoils.
The lack of corporate business seems like a missed opportunity, particularly in NYC and BOS.
I used to work for the NYC office of a tech company with a relatively flexible travel booking policy. I almost always booked JetBlue for my business travel. If your business travel was:
1. Based in NYC or BOS
2. Almost always domestic flights to large metro areas (SFO, SEA, AUS, etc.), and not small regional airports (e.g. TRI, HSV, XNA)
3. Not frequent enough to hit the top loyalty tiers at AA/DL/UA
Then JetBlue had a bunch of advantages:
– Frequent nonstop flights to most major metros
– More pleasant economy experience than other carriers (seat pitch, TV, WiFi, snacks)
– A nice terminal (JFK T5) that was very low-hassle to get to by subway from Manhattan
– Very high point earning value from flights. If I booked on the website (which was allowed at the time), then I would get 6 points per $1, and the points had a ~fixed redemption value of $0.013, so spending $1000 on JetBlue flights would result in ~$78 for use on personal travel. This was significantly higher than the effective earning rate on AA/DL/UA, and the fixed redemption value made them much easier to use than other point currencies. You didn’t need to wait for a “good value” redemption to be available – just pick a flight you were going to take anyway, and spend the points.
– [company-specific] Occasionally Mint fares would be cheap enough that I could book one direction on Mint and still be under my airfare budget (e.g. fly outbound in economy and return on a Mint red eye). This was nice, but I don’t think most companies would allow booking this.
– [minor] Very few Mosaic members, so you didn’t feel like you were at the back of a long line of people more important than you.
I think the target JetBlue corporate customer should have been employees based in NYC or BOS that needed to travel to another corporate office or a conference 2-8x per year. Maybe that’s too narrow to be viable – national companies want to negotiate preferred airlines that will work for *all* their offices, not just two. And JetBlue’s network was fundamentally unable to serve the most frequent corporate flyers. If you were a consultant or banker who might need to fly to client sites in random parts of the country, JetBlue probably couldn’t get you there, but AA, DL, and UA all could. And if you ever needed to fly internationally, JetBlue couldn’t get you there either.
Still, I think there remains a valuable “niche” that an airline like JetBlue could address. I believe they fly most of their routes at least daily, which makes them viable for business travel in a way that the ULCCs just can’t be. Southwest maintains a loyal core of business travelers, even though they have similar limitations.
and yet the principle has been proven over and over that the largest airline in a market wins a disproportionate share of business traffic. Although B6 became slightly larger than DL at JFK and about the same size as AA when B6 began operations with its “gifted” slots, DL quickly grew in NYC in the post-9/11 and esp. at JFK when slot controls were removed. DL also built LGA to become the largest carrier and LGA carries the majority of traffic to destinations that are inside the LGA perimeter.
All legacy airlines do well in the NE and in other competitive markets on routes to places where they are strong. Given that each of the legacy carriers plus WN have a half dozen plus hubs each, that is a lot of market strength on the opposite end of a route that B6 has to overcome even if they can win business in the NE.
And then you get to onboard product which DL heavily matched and is still expanding and UA is in the process of doing; product was not a differentiator.
DL and UA both operate much more reliably even in the same NE and Florida airports where B6 is large.
In the west esp. in secondary California airports, WN is dominant.
In FLL, Spirit has emerged as the dominant player in its hometown, winning the war of attrition with WN and B6.
There simply aren’t enough business or leisure customers that B6 can tap that will pay fares high enough to generate a decent B6 profit.
B6 is stuck in an uncomfortable place between ultra low cost carriers and larger low cost and legacy carriers and they have yet to demonstrate that they can develop a sustainable business plan.
Yup, it’s clearly a network effects business, and JetBlue doesn’t have sufficient scale to compete with AA/DL/UA for the highest-volume business passengers.
In addition, ~38% of the NY metro area population lives west of the Hudson, and almost all of those people will have a very strong preference for flying from EWR.
https://imgur.com/a/ixwkYH1
Welcome back!
The solution to this alleged West Coast hole is simple.
Add B6 to the WCIA/WCA (West Coast Alliance).
Codesharing, reciprocal FFP benefits, etc gives the airline serious strength in all the major markets, not just in the West.
AA has publicly said twice they wanted a partnership.
A220 – Thanks for the warm welcome back! JetBlue can’t do anything with American along those lines per the judgment against the NEA. They’ve got 10 years to wait it out.
I thought I heard some recent transcript from a court hearing that stated AA/JB could come back with a new agreement at any time. I wish I could find it, someone on a.net posted the link.
Fly – A different type of agreement like something that has domestic feeding international, but JetBlue doesn’t really have any feed that it can provide in the west either way.
Ahhh, so even a simple domestic codeshare like the WCIA between AA/AS is out for JB
Fly – A simple codeshare would probably be ok if labor rules allowed it, but that wouldn’t really give any real value to American so I don’t see why it would bother.
I think it was in here:
https://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/sites/ca1/files/oralargs/23-1802_20240603.mp3
The judge specifically said a AS/AA type partnership was allowed (https://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/file/1552921/download). It was the stuff like divvying up routes that was illegal.
Either B6 is too stubborn or AA may be holding out for the NEA appeal to see if they can go a little further than though.
yes, we missed you, are glad you are back, and would love to hear tidbits about your trip if you are willing to share about your part in the massive annual economic infusion that Americans perform in Europe.
The most accurate summary not just of what you wrote here but of jetBlue’s quarter century of operations is that they started out with a very innovative and forward-thinking onboard product strategy that has disproportionately carried the company but has had a series of inconsistent network, growth and competitive strategies which have yet to lead to success.
It is more telling that, in order to cut its losses, B6 is doubling down on its core eastern US/Caribbean leisure network while they are reducing their presence in western US and other airline hub markets as well as retaining service to just a handful of international cities on a year-round basis with capacity that won’t move the needle compared to the competition. Domestically, B6 is not the market leader in any of its major markets including BOS, JFK, FLL or MCO so it will be a niche carrier trying to woo leisure customers with a product which other airlines also offer even though those other airlines do a better job of attracting not just business and leisure customers.
B6′ western US network might be stable because it is small but B6′ future is far from certain.
Could you define what you mean when you say JetBlue “…is not the market leader in any of its major markets…”?
I just looked at the BTS website and JetBlue’s market share in Boston has run 5-7 percentage points over the number two carrier (Delta) every month in 2024 (through May, the last stats available.) For JFK, so far in 2024 Delta has lead only in May, by half al percentage point.
1. BTS data by airport is by operating carrier. Since 45% of DL’s flights at BOS are on regional carriers, the only accurate way to know market share by marketing carrier is to know how to break down regional carrier capacity and assign it to the marketing carrier. Endeavor is all DL but SkyWest and Republic fly for multiple airlines at BOS. B6 has no regional carriers so their share is accurately reported.
2. BTS data is for domestic only. While B6 flies alot of narrowbody international flights, DL’s share is disproportionately larger per flight because it uses widebodies.
3. Revenue is what matters and DL surpassed B6 in local (Boston origin or destination traffic) revenue more than a year ago. Just as in SEA w/ AS, DL gets more revenue per seat mile than B6.
4. and whatever happened in the past doesn’t matter now. DL is flying 15% more flights than B6 now and B6 is cutting markets (as has been discussed here) and will lead the industry in the amount of capacity it is cutting this fall.
same thing applies when you look at JFK data which shows that DL and Endeavor alone have 40% domestic share to B6′ 32%.
in FLL, NK has 47% more flights than B6.
As much as it might be hard to accept, B6 is not the largest carrier in any of its major markets.
It’s not hard to accept – facts are facts and I was missing some understanding of the BTS website.
Thanks for the clarification.
Delta sucks.
Glad you’re back, Brett. I was getting the shakes without my regular Cranky fix (only half kidding).
I was a little surprised to see that seasonal flights from Buffalo & Hartford to LAX are expected to return in the summer, as those do seem somewhat “long and thin” to an outsider. Those are the types of longer domestic routes that I could see being decent fits for certain ULCCs, but both airports have pretty wide catchment areas, and I guess there’s enough demand there to make daily or sub-daily flights profitable for B6 as it carries loads of families to see the Mouse and other attractions in Southern California.
Kilroy – Thanks! Glad to be back.
The Buffalo flight is, I think, political. My guess is that the NY state delegation is very happy about this route and wants to keep it. It’s a late night westbound with redeye return so it really is utilization flying. Pretty low risk and probably has enough political value to continue.
Hartford is a little more suspect, but it does fit into this New England strategy, wanting to run everything between New York and Boston.
I fly the LAX/BUF non stop about once a month. Always full (I don’t have official #s). When the flight goes on hiatus I have to connect and that’s where the horror stories come from.
Europe? Sure hope you were able to visit The Netherlands!
Luuk – Indeed, if you count Maastricht.
I recall seeing blue planes in ANC many years ago.
https://crankyflier.com/2010/11/05/jetblues-anchorage-move-seems-smart-others-should-follow/
Any idea how long did this route live?
Wany – You recall correctly. JetBlue flew LGB – Anchorage every summer from 2011 through 2016. It was daily but it was summer-only. It also flew Seattle – Anchorage every summer from 2013 through 2019 with Portland – Anchorage from 2015 through 2019. All were 1x daily except in the summer of 2015 when Seattle went 2x daily.
Story I heard is AS threatened B6’s primary cargo customer (fish) and they stopped shipping on B6, which killed the route.
B6 does not ship cargo, and AS carries plenty of fish from Alaska. Very little risk of B6 ever cutting into that.
JetBlue does ship cargo, and their website specifically mentions seafood:
https://www.jetblue.com/help/cargo
I don’t think they ever threatened Alaska’s market share, though.
How can an airline survive while ignoring the middle part of the country?
Which is why I’ve never flown Jet Blue……..I’m not gonna fly all the way to JFK and backtrack 1000 miles to get to my destination.
Wait, there are people in flyover country? ;)
Because the majority of Americans live on the coasts.
Alaska is a minor player in the middle of the country too.
Cranky
I’m not as eloquent as you all. ( looked up eloquent spelling). But as a boy I begged Dad to take me out to S. Minneapolis to watch NW, North Cental, Republic and Western go overhead. We watched neighborhoods nearby
be torn down cuz it got to noisy. But as Dad read to me in the Mpls trib, those people were lucky as the airport commision was generous so they could move to quiet neighborhoods. Back to the planes.. Western airlines ( the only way to fly). I was always following Mom around asking her questions she had no answers for ( about planes and cars). So, I was flown to Houston each summer to Uncle Daves. First time, we walked outside to a Braniff 727 that I think was Pucci or Calder.
Pilots brought me into cockpit. I cried cuz they said i couldnt ride up front. I asked the pilots to many questions.Tall lovely Nordic blonde FA’s looking like my aunts in short, vibrantly colored dressed with cool hats first row on the aisle. So they could keep an eye one me. First time on a plane was amazing as you all can vivdly remember too.90% sure we landed in Kansas City ( I’m sure ill be corrected if that wasnt a transit point).
Then onto another brighly colored 727 to Houston Hobby… i have to go to the dentist now. Welcome back Cranky! I will be the tallest Nordic guy at Dork Fest Brad
JetBlue’s market position in NYC and BOS is defensible due to scarcity – they will continue to be able to fill Florida-bound planes at reasonable fares, because the lack of slots (in NYC) and gates (in BOS) means that it’s almost impossible for a ULCC to enter the market at sufficient scale to matter.
But for the Northeast more broadly, I’m skeptical that they can retain market share. The ULCC sharks are circling. Almost every airport in the Northeast that has B6 service also has service from one or more ULCCs, and they are all competing for that leisure traffic, primarily to Florida:
ALB: Allegiant, Avelo
BDL: Avelo, Breeze, Frontier, Spirit
BUF: Frontier
HPN: Breeze
ISP: Breeze, Frontier
MHT: Avelo, Breeze
PVD: Allegiant, Breeze
PWM: Breeze, Frontier
SYR: Allegiant, Breeze, Frontier
The only JetBlue station in the Northeast without ULCC competition is ORH, and you have to assume that they’ve all seriously assessed it and decided there wasn’t a large enough opportunity there. JetBlue is surrounded by lean, hungry competitors looking to carve up the leisure market in the Northeast. It’s not hard to imagine a world where they lose that competition and end up irrelevant outside of JFK and BOS.
Alternatively, maybe they just need to hold on long enough to outlast a temporary oversupply of ULCC capacity. It’s entirely possible that Avelo, Breeze, and Spirit will all be gone (or significantly reduced in scale) within the next several years. The competitive landscape without those carriers would look *much* more favorable to JetBlue.
Ultimately I think it was a major failure by JetBlue management that they left enough un-addressed demand in the Northeast for market entry by startups to look attractive at all. If they had been serving these airports for effectively, then the teams at Avelo and Breeze would have looked at them and said “not worth the fight” and looked elsewhere. Leaving HVN unserved in particular is looking like an unforced error.
I think B6’s presence at ORH is political.
Regarding scarcity at BOS… What’s interesting is that 5-10 years ago, there used to be very few flights on ULCCs + WN from BOS, as airlines like WN focused their efforts at MHT and PVD instead, and fares out of BOS were relatively high. Since then, WN hasn’t done much with MHT, and the ULCCs have invaded BOS, driving down fares on the routes that they compete with against the legacies & B6, especially on the Northeast to Florida routes.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that there are plenty of gates at BOS for an airline like Spirit to make BOS a major base (the way that Spirit does at DTW, or WN at BWI), but that’s true for airports in most larger US cities; excluding the smaller cities that used to be major hubs, not a ton of airports have several dozen gates sitting around and ready to be used. What I am arguing is that (at present) the ULCCs have enough flights on certain key routes (especially from BOS to Florida) to keep B6 and the legacy airlines “honest” in terms of pricing.
> I think B6’s presence at ORH is political.
The Worcester area has almost 1 million people (2022 estimate was ~981k). There’s not an obvious reason that it couldn’t support more service than it currently has. It is a >1 hour drive from BOS, PVD, BDL, and MHT, which is enough to give it a viable catchment area where it is the most convenient option. But there must be details of local demand that I don’t understand.
> What I am arguing is that (at present) the ULCCs have enough flights on certain key routes (especially from BOS to Florida) to keep B6 and the legacy airlines “honest” in terms of pricing.
That’s fair, and it limits the upside case for JetBlue. My impression is just that there isn’t enough capacity for the ULCCs to compete on *all* of JetBlue’s current routes, so they can likely survive and continue to make money by differentiating on destinations and schedule. It’s much easier for a ULCC to go head-to-head with JetBlue at any of the other regional airports.
ORH is purely political. If you want something from Massport in BOS, you better be willing to scratch their backs in ORH. It’s why AA and DL have flown short stage flights there in the past. Nobody makes money there, but its a political play.
Cranky, how do you think things would have panned out had JetBlue won the bidding war for VX?
GS – Hard to know. Certainly it would have given JetBlue enough heft to be relevant on the west coast, at least in San Francisco. But I’m not sure just how defensible it would have been. After all, Virgin America’s finances always underperformed the industry, so it’s hard to say that JetBlue could have made it work when Virgin America couldn’t. I just don’t know.
I imagine they would have pulled back over the years and eventually pulled the plug like at Long Beach. Sven Alaska has cut some of its ex-Virgin America routes. Difference is that Alaska can swap a Boston or JFK route with a West Coast market like Boise or Spokane whereas JetBlue could not.
JetBlue’s retrenchment to its comfort zone in NE/NY is highly risky. An airline as large as JetBlue needs to find other strategies that work besides flying to Florida and the Caribbean. The latest rounds of cuts are an embarrassment and they should be deeply concerned that they can’t make routes from NYC and BOS work. The plans to grow EWR to 75 flights have been abandoned, all of the BOS biz has been ceded to Delta, and JFK can’t be profitable flying to large cities like Minneapolis, San Antonio or Seattle. The choice to enter ISP and MHT was not driven by a market opportunity that B6 is seeing, they are running out of places to fly.
One of the largest strategic errors B6 made was giving up its leadership position in BOS–the only city where it had an opportunity to be a true #1. They took their foot off the gas to grom LAX and aircraft were pulled from BOS. DL has taken advantage.
B6 had opportunities to make transcon markets work but failed to invest in competitive schedules, choosing to fly exclusively redeyes in 1x markets. That is not going to cut it in competitive markets like SEA-NYC where the competition is flying 9-11 flights a day at more desirable times, and B6 is left scraping bargain basement fares for their 1x redeye. B6 never viewed transcon as a strategy but rather utilization flying to reduce CASM. It’s sad to see what could be a great airline.
Another strategy that is rarely discussed is the abandonment of the FLL-Latin/Caribbean network. It is a shell of what it was in 2019. B6 served 24 int’l destinations from FLL in 2019 and only 10 today. They had an opportunity to flow connections from northern origins (DTW, ORD, PHL, PIT, CLE, BWI) via FLL, but these were all 1x markets timed for connections which meant 5 AM SB departures and 9 PM northbound. Good for connections but virtually non-existant for the local market (who wants to fly DTW-FLL at 5 AM when they can fly Delta or Spirit at 11 AM?). Since B6 does not look at beyond contribution for connections, each of those domestic connections were axed which cutoff all of the flow to the Caribbean and destroyed the market.
Failure to invest in routes (better schedules, flying more than 1x to build relevance) is the central theme of B6’s failures. They’ve always been more proud to brag about the 100+ destinations served, but a better strategy may have been to provide deeper service to a smaller number of destinations. B6 needs to find some daylight outside of the Caribbean and the I-95 corridor. All of their eggs are in those 2 baskets. New entrants are finding opportunities to siphon some traffic, entrenched competitors are squeezing from above, and they are running out of growth opportunities. Unless they can profitably fly 18-20 daily flights from JFK-FLL and MCO, I’m not sure what else they can do without finding new market opportunities.
“They took their foot off the gas to groom LAX and aircraft were pulled from BOS.”
No, JetBlue pulled airplanes out of BOS to fly NEA routes, mostly LGA that AA did not have the planes or crew to fly post-Covid. It was a very short-sighted cash grab at a time when cash was short, but as you pointed out the misallocation of resources to support AA’s turf battle in NYC cost B6 dearly in BOS with DL taking advantage of B6 pull-back. Most of your criticisms aren’t poor choices or strategic blunders on JetBlue’s part but rather the unfortunate reality of being a very small, structurally disadvantaged airline that the government has singled out for unequal antitrust enforcement. JetBlue had much bigger plans for LAX and the west coast that required Spirit airplanes and employees to complete. There would have been quite a bit of new Western US synergy between LAX and LAS and all of the additional airframes but alas, the DOJ blocked JetBlue’s expansion plans. We will never know what might have been. One thing is sure post DOJ victory, JetBlue is wounded, competition is worse, the big three have benefitted, and Spirit is on the ropes.
JetBlue was already losing money at LAX and to think adding Spirit into that mix would equal profitability is foolish. I’m not sure why people continue to argue that JetBlue overpaying more than 10x SAVE’s value for their money-losing operation would somehow make both companies stronger. Two negatives don’t equal a positive. The longer the deal took to close, the less attractive Spirit became to JetBlue. I bet a lot of people in Long Island City breathed a sigh of relief when they were off the hook for overpaying billions for a company that’s worth $300M today.
That wasn’t the government’s job to decide. There were several things that occurred at Spirit post deal but pre DOJ verdict that would have given JetBlue an opening to renegotiate the price. Selling airplanes to a leasing company being one, the P&W engine issue another. JetBlue and Spirit both need bigger networks/more size to compete, so yes, adding airframes and capacity does change that. Would it work or be enough? Who knows? No way to run a simulation and a lot of it would depend on the execution and business acumen of management.
I believe at one point they did have 2x transcons to SEA from BOS/JFK, it’s very scary prospects for JetBlue if they can’t even make JFK-SEA work year round though. SEA is the #8 domestic destination from JFK. The choice to suspend is odd given it’s consistently high demand that’s relatively unaffected by seasonality.
JetBlue needs to accept it’s just Eastern 2.0 at this point.
I hope you enjoyed your sabbatical.
“…Seattle ended before summer 2022. Charleston and Seattle were gone by the end of 2023.”
Uhhh which was it? Or is it that Charleston to Seattle was gone by the end of 2023?
Nick – Huh, I think SEA left and came back and left again.
I wonder if AS is gaming out a JetBlue acquisition after they get the HA one digested?
My guess is that they’d be required to divest at least some of the slots at JFK and gates at BOS, which could kill a significant % of the value of the acquisition.
The DOJ’s usual remedy in these situations at an airport with limited access like JFK and BOS, the merged airline has to give up the smaller airline’s slots/gates. So in this case, whatever AS is using would have to be released to new incumbents. So not much.
I was trying to think about merger opportunities for B6… A lot depends on the federal administration’s attitude towards mergers and potential reduction of competition. If B6’s financials were stronger (or if the bankers get some loose financing and get really creative at combining companies) I could see someone trying to eventually combine B6, Breeze, and/or Avelo; Breeze and Avelo might be small enough to pass muster in terms of potential reductions in competition.
AS is the obvious choice, but I think the non-NYC part of B6 could be an interesting fit for UA , especially if B6 gets carved up in bankruptcy court, and it might just pass regulatory muster. UA is arguably the weakest legacy carrier (even including WN as a legacy) east of the Hudson and in north/south flights along the East Coast. At the very least it would be interesting to see what UA could do with BOS and FLL as focus cities, especially in terms of international options.
What exactly would B6 gain from Avelo? A bunch of random routes that they could fly on their own if they wanted to? A bunch of Boeing aircraft to sell to a competitor? (they are probably leased anyway, now that I think about it)
Bankruptcy court sales bypass the DOJ review. They probably still have to get the DOT approval, but thats perfunctory in most cases.
The main reason Alaska overpaid for Virgin was to keep JetBlue from being a real competitor on the west coast. It’s interesting to think of what would have happened if JetBlue had bought Virgin. JetBlue and VX were more complimentary as far as brand, fleet, and networks. But, on the other hand, Alaska is a much better run airline than JetBlue (or Virgin America).
Adding a little color on a couple of LGB routes.
AirTran started transcon flying around the same time JetBlue tried LGB-ATL, so the way I thought of it was that JetBlue got caught in the crossfire between AirTran and Delta on LAX-ATL.
JetBlue had direct competition on the LGB-JFK route. In addition to the frequent LAX-JFK service, American ran 757s on LGB-JFK.
I remember Delta started flying B767-300s on ATL-ONT as well. At AirTran, we wet leased Ryan Intl A320s to get LAX started up ahead of the B737 deliveries. The whole ATL v1.0 experiment for JetBlue was ill-advised… going into a fortress hub with only routes from ATL to the west – so competing for local traffic – and not having any brand recognition, while being covered by DL from every possible point in SoCal to ATL.
FL and DL could relatively peacefully co-exist at ATL (and both worked together to keep the airport’s costs in check, especially when the initial 30 year lease was ending) with enough traffic to go around. Both filled planes, and DL usually did so at a higher fare while FL carried lower fare traffic DL didn’t really want if it didn’t have to. Going into that situation with orphaned west coast flights was just dumb.
Thanks for reminding me of AirTran and its base at ATL, I’d forgotten about that.
I have family an hour south of ATL and have done 1-3 leisure trips a year to ATL for the past 30ish years. AirTran was a decent airline for a lower cost carrier. To your point, while Delta was (still is) an okay airline to fly, it is a more premium legacy, so while AirTran was around was great to have a LCC with a hub in ATL to provide options (and help keep prices in check) in DL’s fortress hub.
I was disappointed when Southwest largely dismantled the ATL hub after buying AirTran.
In hindsight (even with AirTran siphoning off some of the lower fare traffic that DL likely didn’t care much about), I’m surprised that AirTran lasted as long as it did at ATL. DL is often VERY territorial about potential competition (airports or airlines) in the greater Atlanta metro area; while it would likely be a legal longshot, I could see a competitor or an ambitious politician (presumably one of the few in the area that DL doesn’t influence) trying to go after DL for squashing competition.
I’m honestly surprised they ended/are ending SLC-LAX and didn’t keep it as a money losing goodwill gesture to their customer service agents in Salt Lake City, wanting to take their families to Disneyland.
No airline operates money losing flights just so their employees can fly their families somewhere on vacation for free. What planet are you on? Can you point to an airline that does such a thing? JetBlue, like other airlines, is a publicly-funded corporation using shareholder money. It’s not some charity. If you invested your money in a business, would you want them to pursue a money losing venture, giving the product away to employees for free? What a weird, non-sensical thing to say.
While I 100% agree with you, it is not unheard of for B6 to throw goodwill at employees. SLC has never been profitable but they did throw an outsized amount of capacity into the market. They added the second daily JFKSLC flight due to the amount of COBUS travel. The entered (and subsequently exited) GEO partially due to the large amount of Guyanese employees at JFK. They also held onto service to historically money losing stations like OAK, BTV and IAD to avoid employee impact. Eventually it becomes too much to absorb and the plug gets pulled, but it’s not unheard of.
JetBlue still flies to Georgetown, Guayana. Flight 1966 which leaves Georgetown at 1:59AM for JFK. And they did NOT enter it to be friendly to their NYC based employees. They did it because NYC has the largest Guayanese population of any area in the country. There is a market there.
JetBlue is doing poorly these days, and any of these “sacred cows” that dont contribute are and will get the axe.
Thanks for this history. As a leader in Long Beach against the international terminal, a few items. First, you failed to mention the continuous JetBlue violations of the Long Beach Noise Ordinance that turned the local airport adjacent neighborhoods, and the City Prosecutor against the airline. Ever wonder why JetBlue never flew into John Wayne/ Orange County (SNA)?? Because unlike LGB where JetBlue gladly paid the fine for late arrivals, Santa Ana has a HARD curfew- meaning that after the curfew the plane has to land at another airport (LAX or Ontario) and bus the passengers back to Santa Ana, With nightly violations because of the “focus city” model, that would not work. Also, JetBlue “invented” the LGB loophole of what became known as “slot squatting” at LGB and it was used to prevent other airlines from entering LGB. That hurt the bottom line at LGB. In the end, the airline had pissed off enough locals. You did bring up an interesting point, JB was basically trying to find a business model for LGB, As you noted it had abandoned its Cancun flights from LAX, Long Beach would have been stuck with an international terminal to support when JetBlue decided that limited LGB international flights were not working.
Long Beach – I didn’t mention JetBlue’s violations of the noise ordinance because it’s entirely irrelevant to this story. I’ve written about this numerous times, but there was a way to construct a proposal where JetBlue would have been on the hook for the admittedly very inexpensive international facility if it decided to leave. Unfortunately, the council cut this off at the knees before it could have even been discussed properly.
“Long Beach” As a Long Beach local myself everyone I speak to in Long Beach has fond memories of JetBlue and they are disappointed by Southwest’s very regional flight offerings. They are generally confused as to why JetBlue left Long Beach. I have friends that live in Los Altos under the flight path for runway 30. None of them were ever “pissed” at JetBlue and no one has noticed any difference in noise levels now that Southwest has replaced JetBlue. I’ve never met a “pissed off” anti-jetBlue local but I have met some misinformed cry-baby NIMBYs that generally hate the existence of the airport and believe their property values will rise if LGB is gone. I hope you sleep better at night now that Southwest B737’s are flying over your house instead of A320s. Congrats on your success. Enjoy the Southwest red-eye flights that start in February.
I’m most unimpressed by how little they’ve worked on loyalty. Letting Etihad out-compete you on your own metal’s seats is just laughable.
I’ve long been a collector of their points but without any intra-CA flying, I’m not interested.
I was a semi-frequent JetBlue flyer, but since I moved out of New York the points have been almost worthless to me. Only useful if I want to fly to Orlando or Fort Lauderdale, and those flights are typically cheap enough that I’m going to pick based on schedule even if it means not using my points.
Redeem them on Hawaiian Airlines. Great redemption rate.
Kinda bizarre this piece is a blow by blow of JetBlue developments and failures on the west coast, yet both Robin Hayes departure in Feb 2024 and the two act wind down of LAX is discussed without a single mention of the monumental event that precipitated both – the DOJ successfully blocking JetBlue’s acquisition of Spirit in January 2024. This was the single worst thing that has ever happened to JetBlue and a major shock to management who really bet the farm on Spirit. JetBlue spent close to a billion dollars on a failed merger and squandered years of planning and institutional capacity for nothing. JetBlue had big plans for LAX that it could not pull off without Spirit aircraft and crew. IF the Spirit merger was allowed to proceed JetBlue would have been able to create some west coast synergy and flight frequency with LAX and LAS hubs, plus they could have started servicing parts of the United States between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, a long standing deficiency. We’ll never know what might have been. The court loss to the DOJ is extremely important for context. Unacceptable omission for any historical JetBlue analysis. The blocked Spirit acquisition was a disaster for JetBlue, detrimental to US airline competition, a bad outcome for consumers, and a likely death sentence for Spirit. The only parties that benefitted were the big three. Diminished competition, newly available A321 NEOs up for grabs, and a good number of highly experienced pilots jumping ship for greener pastures.
Actually, a pretty good metaphor for everything this administration does/has done. Make edicts that claim to fight ‘big corporate bosses’ in favor of the little guy, when in reality all their policies do is to crush smaller and mid-sized entities while further enriching the elites at the top. This is a perfect example and you described the consequences quite nicely.
In regards to LAX I have never been able to find what B6 and NK leases in regards to gates. From an outsider looking in it always seemed that the two airlines lacked the space to really expand at LAX shoe horned in T5 and sort of at the mercy of AA as the larger lease holder. Maybe the had the space but to me it didn’t appear that way.
The best proof that the DOJ does approve well-designed mergers is their approval of AS/HA without conditions. IIRC, DL/NW was the last legacy carrier merger approved without conditions so they do happen but are not very common.
I know that many like to believe that the feds had it in for B6 but you have to ask how many other previous airline transactions that have been approved by the DOJ mirrored the Northeast Alliance and the B6/NK merger and the answer for both is zero.
As for LAX, B6 added a number of highly competitive routes with just a single daily frequency compared to multiple frequencies by other carriers; it isn’t a surprise that B6 did poorly in those markets. B6 also did not do well based on DOT data even in some of their long and thin markets where they had no direct nonstop competition. The DOJ didn’t kill B6′ LAX plans.
TD- you’re spouting absolute nonsense. The only thing the DOJ’s non-action towards the AS/HA merger proves is the DOJ is arbitrary, and capricious in how it chooses to mete out its antitrust enforcement. HA/AS has far more route overlap than B6/NK and AS/HA are more concentrated in their respective hubs than JetBlue or NK in their hubs. AS/HA certainly appears to be a good merger by Obama administration antitrust standards, but it is in no way less problematic (actual antitrust law deals with market share and competition not price) than the blocked B6 acquisition of NK.
JetBlue management doesn’t appear to be the best in the business, but they’re not so stupid they don’t understand the concept of frequency. Case in point, JetBlue manages frequency just fine out of JFK. JetBlue is a small structurally flawed airline that needs every one of its aircraft to fend off competitors in their east coast hubs and any airplane pulled from the East coast is a potential weakness a larger competitor with deeper pockets and a larger stable of aircraft could exploit. Acquiring Spirit would have finally given B6 the lift they needed to compete in LAX and LAS with higher frequency. B6 had acquired space from LAWA in terminal 5 to build a new crew room and there were signs aplenty that JetBlue had big plans for West Coast expansion and was making preparations for major growth in LAX, perhaps finally providing the frequency required to build markets post-merger. All of this momentum came to a screeching halt and reversed course post DOJ loss so you would have to be an absolute fool to argue the timing of JetBlue’s LAX collapse was not precipitated by losing the Spirit acquisition. Had the merger been approved Robin Hayes would probably still be the CEO, the stock would not have cratered and Carl Icahn would have never had a chance to scoop up stock at penny-ante prices. We’ll never know what might have been, but you don’t need a crystal ball or insider knowledge to see the DOJ’s denied Spirit acquisition was what ended JetBlue’s west coast expansion plan.
Maybe B6′ mistake was saying that the reason for acquiring NK was to acquire their planes and crews and eliminate a lower cost competitor and that is why the DOJ blocked the merger.
and maybe it wasn’t a smart idea to develop a bunch of plans to build out LAX or any other city outside of its core east coast markets before it had the planes and crews in hand.
The past is in the rearview mirror.
I genuinely do hope B6 can turn itself around and I genuinely do think the current leaders at B6 know what they have to do – and being as large as they were or you think they could have been on the west coast is not part of what they believe B6 needs right now.
“Maybe B6? mistake was saying that the reason for acquiring NK was to acquire their planes and crews and eliminate a lower cost competitor and that is why the DOJ blocked the merger.”
JetBlue never said that. You lie. The much ballyhooed powerpoint slides used at the trial were Frontier management propaganda intended to persuade Spirit shareholders against the purchase offer of competing suitor, JetBlue. Frontier made those defamatory claims, not JetBlue. The judge even acknowledged JetBlue’s attorneys did a great job of demonstrating the merger would be pro-competitive.
From the decision –
page 101: ” … the Defendant Airlines provide strong evidence that
the combined, post-merger airline would be procompetitive and
result in substantial benefits for consumers.”
page 102 & 103 : “The Defendant Airlines have demonstrated that an expansion
of all aspects of JetBlue’s business — including network,
fleet, and loyalty program — would allow for more vigorous
competition with the Big Four, which carry most passengers in
the country. The size of an airline, the number of routes it
serves, the number of options it offers to consumers — all of
these aspects add to an airline’s relevance to consumers, and
were JetBlue to become more relevant, it would immediately place
more pressure on its greatest competitors, the Big Four. This
pressure would benefit consumers. The Defendant Airlines have
also demonstrated that the product JetBlue offers, though more
expensive on average, is higher quality, and provides consumers
with an enhanced flying experience. Were JetBlue to expand via
the proposed acquisition, not only would that product become
more widely available to more consumers, but the increased
revenue available could also allow JetBlue to innovate further
and create an even stronger customer experience.
Overall, the Defendant Airlines have successfully met their
relatively low burden to rebut the Government’s prima facie
case.”
NOT to be a Danny Downer, but it is does seem JetBlue, may begin to have some new in addition to existing challenges out west with its Premium Products in California, with some recent and ongoing other airline events.
Unfortunate as it may be, its time B6 comes to terms with its products strengths in the regions it serves well.