flightline

Does anyone see this on the near horizon? Perhaps as DL continues to kill off Skymiles, and given Southwest's near abandonment of the former AirTran hub, there might be more O&D traffic ready to cross the line to B6.

As an aside, Spirit has made great strides at ATL, though load factors don't seem great.

JetBlueFA

ATL is on a short list however the problem we are now running into is a lack of airframes. It's one of a select few destinations that isn't served from Boston that our business customers want. We will be back in ATL but I don't see it happening before mid 2017 at the earliest.

sbm12

There is only one Core config plane being delivered between now and then IIRC. I know that the Mint deliveries do free up some 320s to do other routes but many of those are spoken for, too (BUF-LAX, FLL-MSY, etc.). Fortunately most of the replacement routes are not transcons so things can fill in more quickly, but I'd want to be able to do 4x daily if I were JetBlue going in to that market. Because we know Delta is going to get aggressive in fighting back.

beyondhere

Southwest still has a hub in ATL and a lot of connecting pax through ATL.

Strategically, JetBlue should have added the BOS-ATL route in the early stage of the AirTran-Southwest conversion, along with adding ATL-FLL. Southwest might have not converted the BOS-ATL route to it's own metal if JetBlue had gone in, and had as much ease to build a frequent flier base on the route.

flightline

Not according to Southwest (on the hub issue).

"'In Atlanta, we’re essentially de-hubbing AirTran’s model and moving to the Southwest point-to-point style operation,' said Southwest chief executive Gary Kelly in a message to employees."

From Atlanta Journal Constitution, May 7, 2013. (http://www.myajc.com/news/business/s...tes-in-atlanta)

beyondhere

Easy as Southwest doesn't acknowledge the word hub in it's operations. But in the eastern US, BWI and ATL are very much hubs. WN is just claiming it moved toward some routes to have more point to point O&D in ATL.

The single ATL-CUN flight is timed coincidentally with all of the WN eastern spokes that have ATL flights. The ATL-PBI/RSW flights from Southwest are very light on O&D in particular, and are driven by connecting traffic.

Yellowjj

I'm pretty sure JetBlue can free up frames to start ATL if they so desired. There's still some fear about Atlanta and it has nothing to do with Southwest.

beyondhere

Lack of frames hasn't been the problem as it has opened in smaller markets like DTW, CLE and BNA, where it competes against just one carrier on it's routes.

In ATL, it'd have to compete against Delta and Southwest on BOS-ATL and ATL-FLL. Probably Spirit would end BOS-ATL but even with that assumption, B6 might be estimating weak yields on the BOS-ATL route with the fares it would sell with the fare war of three or more carriers. Southwest is on the route as the alternative to Delta already for business passengers. JetBlue would need not just Delta's marketshare to pull from.

PWMTrav

DL runs something like 12x daily BOS-ATL. Lots of 757s on the route, too. DL could drop fares and crush any competition on that route.

beyondhere

Strangely enough, when there were five carriers competing on PHL-ATL and with DL operating the most frequency (11x daily), it was DL that was charging the highest and getting the fare premium. It was AA that dropped it's fares in attempt to crush competition, selling low walk up fares. It's a weaker carrier on that route, and it had the most to lose. Frontier has pulled out and it's down to four carriers with NK also in, but DL rarely went as low in fares as AA or WN in faring.

In a DL vs. WN vs. B6 match up on BOS-ATL, fares will probably drop and stimulation would happen, but I don't believe fare reduction would be as drastic as I've seen on PHL-ATL. I'd expect NK to drop out or go seasonal. The winter months are hardest. While ATL is warmer than the NE in the Winter, it's still cold there at that time, and not like Florida to stimulate crowds. Winter months would be the hardest for B6, with it not being able to connect pax through ATL generally. However, it might be possible running the flight as a one-stop down to FLL: BOS-ATL-FLL, if B6 does that, to help load factors which would likely be weaker especially in the Winter months.

adambisi

You may be onto something here. Look at the following data

ATL-BOS O+D

Q4 2014 1140 PDEW
Q1 2015 - 840 PDEW
Q2 2015 - 1220 PDEW
Q3 2015 - 1290 PDEW

big drop off in Q1 and Q1-2014 was around 900 PDEW so snowpocalyse of 2015 wasn't a big factor.

4 daily E-190's - you're probably going to need to steal at least 340 PDEW away for it to be worthwhile. Not sure if feeding international carriers in BOS will help this route. It won't be easy in Winter and may be a loss-leader to do better overall in BOS.

beyondhere

I think JetBlue can do better in March than the first two months of Winter on BOS-ATL, mainly because weather becomes milder in March in ATL, daylight savings - longer days to help boost travel, Spring Break and one way car rental deals out of Florida beginning the last week of March, if passengers use it to fly out of ATL.

I don't see Spirit with much lasting power, but it'd be a minor PITB for JetBlue if Spirit decided to re-allocate the fleet to BOS-MCO.

More importantly, if Southwest would continue or concede the route would make a bigger difference for JetBlue.. I think JetBlue can offer the right aircraft for the market, and would be more popular with business passengers based in Boston. Within Southwest's network, I also think Southwest's BOS-BWI already covers most of the connections better than BOS-ATL, with BOS-BNA/HOU/DAL/AUS/MDW/DEN providing additional connections for those that like to go with Southwest connections, even if it's a hassle, for the benefit of lack of change fees and two checked bags. Delta will obviously be there, but JetBlue should do well with Boston based passengers.