Logan Airport Flights and Airlines Discussion
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Pronoun-induced confusion: are you saying Southwest's 2x BOS-HOU won't get in the way of United's hub/dominance in BOS-IAH or that United's beefed up BOS-IAH won't get in the way of Southwest?
United's schedule is better suited for business travelers considering there will be 6 daily flights. United also has the advantage of having a pretty big network to connect passengers to out of Bush as well.
I think we're going to see some stimulation to an already decent sized Boston-Houston market. As well as some lower fares.
I think we're going to see some stimulation to an already decent sized Boston-Houston market. As well as some lower fares.
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It seems the only decent-sized midwest "focus city" places for JetBlue are Columbus, Indianapolis, and Kansas City--places that have supported RJs or better from Boston in the past. Or could JetBlue make Gary IN cool?
Gary Airport being the "Worcester" of Chicagoland. Then again, Long Beach wasn't particularly cool at the outset either.
Gary Airport being the "Worcester" of Chicagoland. Then again, Long Beach wasn't particularly cool at the outset either.
Ron Newman
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JetBlue used to serve Columbus, but withdrew entirely from that market several years ago.
Gary wouldn't be feasible for anything more than a few flights per day. It always surprised me that JetBlue couldn't make it in Columbus. I spent a fair amount of time there in 2004 and have been back about once a year since and it seems like they have the sort of demographic that would go for JetBlue en masse.
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My family lives in Columbus. I liked JetBlue enough that I was willing to pay more to fly them instead of the competition. Not enough other people felt the same way, I guess.
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So that makes you, me and Ron Newman who all have Columbus ties but are Boston-based. It must be that Delta or US Airways squeezed JetBlue out somehow.
Columbus has a good demographic (prosperous, service economy, students, funky/creatives) and a good industry cross section (education, insurance/finance, government) that *has* supported a hub in the past (although admittedly America West's was red-eye and LGA/DCA focused).
If JetBlue is going to make good on their goal of getting to 150 flights per day at Boston (up from 100ish today), it's going to get tough: it's either going to have to be into:
- fortress hubs (like Atlanta and Detroit)
- secondary hubs (like Cleveland and Cinci)
- secondary cities in the 2 Million pop but without a Southwest nonstop
With Southwest serving MCI and STL, that last bullet point looks like San Antonio, PIT (2.3m), Columbus (1.8M), Kansas City (2.0M) and Indianapolis (1.7M). Austin and Charlotte are in that same size range, and we do see JetBlue flying there.
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Yes, sorry, JetBlue has had 3x or 4x BOS-PIT for a while (but dropped JFK!)
You'd think that Vancouver would love to go places that JetBlue's good at, but I am not sure LGB can do international (Alaska does compete YVR-LAX), and FLL/Carib might be too far (2700 miles...and JetBlue is not even in SEA-FLL) and not even Air Canada flies YVR-BOS, leaving YVR-JFK.
JetBlue already flies multiple daily non-stop flights on Boston-Pittsburgh and JFK-Pittsburgh.
Columbus also never had a true hub. They had a small focus operation for America West. Columbus is not well suited at all, aside from perhaps geography, to be a hub, or even a focus operation.
Columbus also never had a true hub. They had a small focus operation for America West. Columbus is not well suited at all, aside from perhaps geography, to be a hub, or even a focus operation.
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JetBlue's JFK-PIT was dropped on Feb 27. The PR from around the time it was dropped said they "remain committed" to Pittsburgh.
Not that it is our job to solve JetBlue's problems, but they do appear to need something that allows them to grow Boston by serving more of the heartland.
The gratifying thing is that they are doing cities from Boston that can't/won't work from JFK. So far the list at least includes DCA, PIT, and PHL that are done from BOS but not JFK.
You also see competitors trying to pre-empt JetBlue in exactly these markets, as with Southwest announcing HOU-BOS and HOU-PIT, and American launching LAX-CMH/PIT/RDU/BDL all of which are very "JetBluesy" in their transcon length and hipster potential.
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With JetBlue's standing in Boston today I would be confident that they could make it work. At the time they served Boston-Columbus(October 2006-January 2008) they were competing against both American and Delta. American Eagle, which at one time had around five daily flights, dropped the route entirely in April 2010 and Delta Connection currently only offers three daily flights, all on Embraer E135's. In the past they've had four or five flights with most of them being CRJ200's and Embraer E170's, which seat about 50 and 75 respectively.
choo said:
Boston to Montreal is on the decline in terms of passenger numbers. If there was an opportunity there, I'm sure Delta would jump on it. Boston to Vancouver is too small of a market, only about 115 passengers per day. It might be workable in the summer but I don't think Air Canada's that eager tie up a plane for such a thin route when there's money to be made elsewhere.
Not directly related to Boston, but JetBlue announce flights today to Lima, Peru from their hub in FLL. Europe traffic is already taken care of and obviously its growth is limited. Latin America has a growing middle class and growing presence in business. I think (hope) JetBlue will do well, because I would like to go to South America JetBlue is easily the best. I know this is a route they will never do direct from Boston, and probably wont have many direct routes from Boston or even NY to South America given their current fleet.
My question is, where does the range on their current fleet tap out? Can they do FLL to Chile or Brazil? What would be next on their central/south America growth? Santiago? Panama City?
My question is, where does the range on their current fleet tap out? Can they do FLL to Chile or Brazil? What would be next on their central/south America growth? Santiago? Panama City?
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I think it is relevant because to the extent that JetBlue does have good opportunities from FLL it will be FLL that gets new flights ahead of BOS.
Eyeballing their routemap, JetBlue's longest flight today is probably FLL-SFO at 2583mi, and the new FLL-LIM will be longer at 2617mi, so I'm thinking that right around 2600mi is the practical max (depending on elevation, heat, runway length, and the jetstream and such) (EDIT: BOS-SFO is 2700ish, but not as hot)
Karl Swartz's Great Circle Mapper let's you plot ranges and route lengths easily, such as this one showing a 2600mi radius at each of FLL and San Juan PR (SJU) and some sample routes, which should be about right for seeing where JetBlue could go in an A320. As you can see, they can't quite reach the populous coast of Brazil or anything south of Bolivia, really.
It looks like they'd just be able to make it from SJU to Brasilia (BSB).
And just for fun, here's a version that includes 2700mi radii and adds a circle showing that you can get from Boston to Iceland (KEF) as well as Boston to Colombia (BOG and MDE).
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Boston to San Francisco is 2700. The A320's official range is 3300 nautical miles, so nearly 3800 statute miles, but I don't think anyone stretches their 320's that far.
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Looking around, the A320 routes seem to max out right around 2700 miles. Besides JetBlue's BOS-SFO, there is/was Heathrow to Tehran which is also in the 2700 range (2749mi), so my circles are looking like reasonable estimates of the outer envelope that airlines would try in an A320.
If they could get approvals to serve Caracas they would serve it tomorrow but I think their next destination will be Managua. Mexico City and Port-Au Prince to MIA/FLL are bigger markets but MEX is tied up in a US-Mexico bilateral agreement (Spirit may posess route authority) and Haiti may have a bureaucratic tie-up to start plus on airfield security issues.
Lima gave them their biggest market to South America that they weren't currently serving and was short enough to serve.