Independence Air iClub - See you LAter

DECISION MADE TO DISCONTINUE SERVICE TO LAX

East Coast Airbus Flying Proves More Efficient

Due to ever-increasing fuel prices and the expense incurred by flying into Los Angeles, we have decided to discontinue service to LAX as of September 30th. Although our service there was verypopular, and our loads were generally quite high, the cost of flying to that destination is much higher per seat than making multiple flights with the Airbus to destinations East of the Mississippi. You may recall that a similar decision was made about San Jose and San Diego.
“It’s all about fuel. Flying to LA burns a lot of fuel, and we’re not seeing average fares that cover that. We burn about 3500 gallons on a trip to the West Coast, and since fuel is up by a dollar in
recent months, that’s another $3500 per trip we need to recoup,” explained Jeff Pollack (Senior Director, Market Planning). “The current fares people are willing to pay to the West Coast just aren’t able to cover the expense of flying there.” Jeff went on to say, “We are pleased with the performance of our A319s on the East Coast.
Financially, we are getting good returns with our East Coast Airbus flights, even at load factors that are less than what we’ve been seeing in our Western markets.”
Remember, LAX is not staffed by FLYi employees, so Customer Service staffing will not be affected by this decision."

DECISION MADE TO DISCONTINUE SERVICE TO LAX

East Coast Airbus Flying Proves More Efficient

Due to ever-increasing fuel prices and the expense incurred by flying into Los Angeles, we have decided to discontinue service to LAX as of September 30th. Although our service there was verypopular, and our loads were generally quite high, the cost of flying to that destination is much higher per seat than making multiple flights with the Airbus to destinations East of the Mississippi. You may recall that a similar decision was made about San Jose and San Diego.
“It’s all about fuel. Flying to LA burns a lot of fuel, and we’re not seeing average fares that cover that. We burn about 3500 gallons on a trip to the West Coast, and since fuel is up by a dollar in
recent months, that’s another $3500 per trip we need to recoup,” explained Jeff Pollack (Senior Director, Market Planning). “The current fares people are willing to pay to the West Coast just aren’t able to cover the expense of flying there.” Jeff went on to say, “We are pleased with the performance of our A319s on the East Coast.
Financially, we are getting good returns with our East Coast Airbus flights, even at load factors that are less than what we’ve been seeing in our Western markets.”
Remember, LAX is not staffed by FLYi employees, so Customer Service staffing will not be affected by this decision."


I wonder if this move would have still been made if the fuel costs hadn't shot up as much in recent months.

Those flights were quite popular. I know that they were flying them to capture some of that revenue that gets lost when UA doesn't release enough inventory on their non-stop to LAX.

So much for those cheap AA IAD-LAX fares as well..

You're right. There goes the cheap transcon fares to IAD.

You're right. There goes the cheap transcon fares to IAD.


what about iad - oak (although i havent flown it in a while)
and iad - lgb

both served by other lccs?

explained Jeff Pollack (Senior Director, Market Planning). “The current fares people are willing to pay to the West Coast just aren’t able to cover the expense of flying there.”
Ding! Ding! Now if they just remedy that on the rest of the system. just pick routes where they can be priced in a way that covers the cost of flying there + overhead.

An a side note, I was just looking for flights from Chicago to San Francisco. By far the cheapest fare was FlyI - with a connection in D.C. So, the FlyI flight would be about 1000 miles (each way) longer than the competitors, and yet still be the cheapest.

Sad to hear :(

I know IAD-OAK is served by JetBlue, it has been rather cheap on United as well. (Around 200 roundtrip last Christmas)