Guess Wikipedia was wrong. Regardless, it’s a niche leisure route. I wouldn’t get too worked up about it.
JetBlue and Spirit agree to merge.
- Thread starter stellarfun
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Guess Wikipedia was wrong. Regardless, it’s a niche leisure route. I wouldn’t get too worked up about it.
I tend to agree - I really don't think the NEA with AA survives this merger. AA has Alaska in their corner already by sponsoring their admission to OW (Oneworld), that and a expanded JetBlue I'm pretty sure wouldn't pass muster. Admittedly, I think a merged / expanded JetBlue would tend to occupy market space not too dissimilar to US Airways prior to their merger with AA; east coast heavy, primarily domestic with a weak transatlantic service that'll probably be pretty close to US Air's as the XLR rollout continues.
United is so widebody / international heavy, it has the weakest domestic network of the big 3 - and definitely out of Boston - so much so that I think they suffered disproportionately when they lost US Air's *A (Star Alliance) domestic feed. They could do really well with JetBlue as a partner.
That said, the alliance system seems to be losing relevance globally, in favor of bi and multilateral agreements. Think Delta's JVs, specific agreements with AF-KLM, Virgin and LATAM. *A hasn't had a member join since 2014 with Air India, China Southern pulled out of Skyteam with no plans on joining another. OW is the only one growing with Alaska and Oman.
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BosDevelop
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No one is getting worked up over anything. It is one of the top weekend golf trip destinations in the country and would be nice to have regular non-stop service between Logan once the merger is complete.
Spirit currently flies it double daily. They don't fly a whole lot of primarily leisure routes more than once daily if there isn't sufficient demand. I'd be very surprised if it isn't flown year round once the merger is completed.
JetBlue is paying 200 million less for Spirit than Alaska paid for Virgin
And Spirit is a lot larger than Virgin was pre merger.
Equilibria
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Fair, but Virgin and JetBlue fit like puzzle pieces - they were essentially mirror airlines on opposite coasts (before B6 regressed a bit). JetBlue and Spirit... not so much.
True. However for Alaska it was an interesting purchase as virgin had no fleet commonality with Alaska's all Boeing fleet. JetBlue and Spirit have similar fleets, only difference being the more cramped seating arrangements at spirit.
Equilibria
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I agree with that. B6 is clearly buying slots, planes, and pilots here, not an airline. Spirit will vanish.
navigator4
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Not non-stop.
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So the interesting question: Will BigBlue continue to target leisure travel at the Big 3's hubs?
I'd guess their priorities are:
But then what? Is JetBlue's future only at JFK & BOS, the same way Alaska is basically PDX and SEA? (OT: Herb Kelleher once lauded Alaska as "The Preditory Pricer of the Pacific Northwest") Will it be JetBlue's job to flood the "Northeast Alliance" zone in secondary airports like MHT, SWF, and ACY?
JetBlue Proposed Spirit Merger Map, 2022 by airbus777, on Flickr
I'd guess their priorities are:
- Backfill staff to maintain BOS & JFK
- Pull out of Southwest hubs that rival the "business" airport (OAK, BWI)
- Beef up BOS & JFK to other airline's hubs currently served by Spirit (ATL, ORD, DFW, DTW, LAS)
- Build up FLL as an omnidirectional hub, beef up FLL to legacy hubs, retain all of Spirit beach destinations in LatAm, but not routed via ATL
- Serve all Caribbean desinations from BOS & JFK as long as they're within practical range.
- Serve deeper Central & South America from FLL
- Retain spirit's LAX, MCO & SJU & LAS flying in longer markets (where they're preferred to Southwest)
But then what? Is JetBlue's future only at JFK & BOS, the same way Alaska is basically PDX and SEA? (OT: Herb Kelleher once lauded Alaska as "The Preditory Pricer of the Pacific Northwest") Will it be JetBlue's job to flood the "Northeast Alliance" zone in secondary airports like MHT, SWF, and ACY?
JetBlue Proposed Spirit Merger Map, 2022 by airbus777, on Flickr
dshoost88
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Thinking less in “the Big3” terms and more about some other attractive characteristics about the merger that people aren’t really discussing:So the interesting question: Will BigBlue continue to target leisure travel at the Big 3's hubs?
I'd guess their priorities are:
- Backfill staff to maintain BOS & JFK
- Pull out of Southwest hubs that rival the "business" airport (OAK, BWI)
- Beef up BOS & JFK to other airline's hubs currently served by Spirit (ATL, ORD, DFW, DTW, LAS)
- Build up FLL as an omnidirectional hub, beef up FLL to legacy hubs, retain all of Spirit beach destinations in LatAm, but not routed via ATL
- Serve all Caribbean desinations from BOS & JFK as long as they're within practical range.
- Serve deeper Central & South America from FLL
- Retain spirit's LAX, MCO & SJU & LAS flying in longer markets (where they're preferred to Southwest)
But then what? Is JetBlue's future only at JFK & BOS, the same way Alaska is basically PDX and SEA? (OT: Herb Kelleher once lauded Alaska as "The Preditory Pricer of the Pacific Northwest") Will it be JetBlue's job to flood the "Northeast Alliance" zone in secondary airports like MHT, SWF, and ACY?
- LAS, MCO, and FLL/MIA are not only the top leisure destinations in the US… they are fast-growing metropoli. Demographic trends being what they are, these are smart markets to grow business in for both focus/hub ops AND O&D business.
- The investment in resorts, airports, and other infrastructure across both of Mexico’s coasts indicates a great opportunity to capture more travelers. Neither Spirit nor JetBlue simply have major ops in western Mexico (Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, Mazatlan, Aculpulco, Tijuana, et al)… the market share jetblue captures moving west domestically expands the opportunity to expand in these parts of Mexico. But Cancun?… the sustained popularity of that destination spells big growth opportunity for any willing airlines, and I think it’s priming to be a savvy location to expand throughout Mexico.
Quite frankly I don't think any US carrier is going to choose to serve Tijuana when San Diego is right there, (and they haven't) but you're not wrong. The coastal tourist towns all have more US and Canada service than domestic, but I would hesitate to get into some of the nicher Mexican airports you mentioned. A BOS-Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, would be nice to see from a tourist perspective, and Guadalajara is major enough of a business destination that JetBlue should probably serve it purely from a network perspective, but Mazatlan? Thats a trip only AA runs year round from cities with high Mexican expat populations on regionals. Acapulco is in a similar, too small market category, served primarily for domestic tourism.
That said, domestic air connectivity in Mexico is perhaps not quite as good as it could be - between Aeromexico, Viva and Volaris, combined they still have a fleet smaller than pre-merger JetBlue.
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dshoost88
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JetBlue removes 37 routes with big cuts hitting NYC and South Florida
Notably from the announcement, not a single route from Boston was cut.
Notably from the announcement, not a single route from Boston was cut.
No JFK cuts either.
Interesting too that united, dominant at EWR, has also cut flights there over the summer.
Notably both FLL and EWR have sizable spirit ops, FLL in particular where a combined carrier would dominate.
Frankly I'm surprised that JetBlue is already starting to make concessions that would make antitrust regulators happy (mainly NYC and FLL slots).
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It's not just United - overall the airline industry is struggling to actually fulfill their schedule obligations - see Delta, JetBlue and the various European meltdowns in recent weeks. Overall global seat capacity is still at about half of prepandemic levels, but the system is still struggling, and I think united specifically is operating at about 90% of 2019 levels. They want to grow and capture the rebound in demand... They just haven't been able to, so they're trying to mitigate issues by building in buffer by not so tightly scheduling limited resources. (primarily human, and not just pilots - a lot of ground ops teams are really thin right now. Still not sure where exactly United is planning on finding 10,000 pilots in the next 10 years - there's no pipeline that wide in the US currently and their ab initio program isn't that big.)
Brattle Loop
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Have to wonder how much it is antitrust concerns versus how much it is capacity/staffing issues and them wanting to avoid yet another meltdown (because their reputation for operational...fragility is bad enough as it is). Could be a bit of both, with them deciding to focus operational-flexibility-increasing capacity cuts on routes/cities that they worry might draw antitrust scrutiny as opposed to spreading them more across the system. On the other hand, it's also not all that surprising that at a time when they like every airline are struggling to maintain their schedule, their cuts just so happen to protect their Northeast hubs. (FLL's a big one for them, and did see cuts, but Spirit's the main competition there and not currently proper competition, unlike Delta's growing threat to B6 at Logan.)
I'd argue that it's the latter. Airlines are having serious issues, as has been well documented, operating their schedules system wide on a consistent basis. Personally, I have several family/friends/co-workers who have flown in the last 6 months that have had serious delays ranging from 4 hours, to as much as 30 hours. I've flown 5 times this year and have lucked out on dealing with issues. I think we'll see JetBlue really make adjustments to please anti-trust concerns in 2023. Right now they need to focus of managing what they have which is what they and every other airline has been attempting to do with the announced service reductions in the coming months.