JetBlue Wants to Return to ATL in 2017
Jackie Reddy July 13, 2016
Let’s get back together: the low-cost carrier will begin service from Atlanta in 2017 after a fourteen-year absence.
After a hiatus of well over a decade, it appears that JetBlue will be making a return to Atlanta’s Hartsfield—Jackson International Airport (ATL) in 2017.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution has reported that the New York-based carrier sent a letter of interest to authorities at ATL last week, announcing its plans to resume service from the city.
Back in 2003, the low-cost carrier made its debut at ATL, offering services to Long Beach and Oakland, California. JetBlue, however, was forced to beat a hasty retreat when it was caught up in the tussle between two rapidly expanding airlines, Delta and low-cost carrier AirTran.
As the other two airlines engaged in a fare war, the pressure to lower prices proved to be too much for JetBlue and it was forced to pull out of the city after only a matter of months.
But things are different this time around. The paper reports that, in a letter to ATL interim aviation general manager Roosevelt Council, Dave Clark, JetBlue’s VP of network planning, stated, “We believe that the Atlanta air market is currently overpriced and suffering from insufficient competition.”
“For example, during 2015 customers traveling between Atlanta and metro New York paid fares 25 percent higher than JetBlue customers paid to fly non-stop between metro New York and Fort Lauderdale,” he added.
Reese McCranie, spokesman for ATL, told the paper that this letter, “underscores our commitment to attracting new service to Atlanta and increasing competition.”
At present, while no announcements have been made as to which destinations JetBlue would serve from Atlanta, the carrier has at least indicated that the airport’s “common use” gates at Terminal D “are not satisfactory” for its upcoming needs.
Clark, however, is looking to the future and says that the carrier, “look[s] forward to continuing the on-going dialogue and hope[s] to come to an agreement soon for two preferential gates that are suitable for both JetBlue and the airport and enable a September 2017 commencement of JetBlue service.”
[Photo: DigitalChase]
“We believe that the Atlanta air market is currently overpriced and suffering from insufficient competition.”--truer words were never spoken. Delta has a strangle hold on Atlanta and has for years, and they like it this way. JetBlue will need to be prepared for another fare war because Delta will do all that they can to run them off again.