Originally Posted by
ciaobel
you counted UA twice and left out WN conveniently - if that is the your perspective.
To be fair, if you adjust for the length of existence for the carrier, and the special charges that the legacies took for Bankruptcies, JBLU will be right in the middle of the pack.
What happened is that JBLU narrowly avoided a near-death, as evidenced by the rebound of stock price. And what did it have to do to avoid that near death?
1. Dilution of the current stock base by selling to, surprisingly, a foreign flagship legacy
2. Tighten up the fees for change and re-pricing
3. Raise the ticket price - evidenced by the posts in the forum about lack of deals and the rollout of Y refundables
4. Attempt to build more code-shares
5. Attempt to tier reward structure
6. Cut down freebies and start charging fees
All that sounds familiar? Yes, JBLU is becoming a legacy, or part of. We judge by the action not the words. GONE are the days where you get superior service for below the cost. Unfortunately, those "deals" were built on the subsidy of investors and un-jaded employees. Now JBLU starts behaving like a legacy, or rather business, those people who love the company for the wrong reasons will have to eat crow, if not now, will be soon.
Last but least, the development of relationship between CO and LiveTV is a very interesting one. It is effectively a cash infusion by CO - JBLU has to pledge something down the road. My guess is it is either the ease of price war over Florida market, or a signal for the upcoming merger mania for the industry.
My double mention of UA has been noted and corrected.
I did, however, mention WN, here is the excerpt: "And no, B6 has not been more profitable than WN in the period since 9/11."
First, it is indeed hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison between JBLU and the legacies because B6 was a fast-growing start-up while the legacies were dealing with decades of accumulated debts, many of which were structural (of course, many dealt with it by filing chptr 11).
No question that JBLU is maturing and becoming more like a legacy. Perhaps that is an inevitable feature of flying so much long-haul Remember WN's real ace is that it flies so much higher RASM short haul.
As far as the deal between LiveTV and CO, B6 is essentially bearing the full burden of the risk since they are installing and maintaining the systems at no cost to CO. If people buy, it will be a good deal for JBLU, but if they don't, the only cost CAL has to shoulder is the slightly higher cost of fuel due to heavier payload.
Not much of a partnership if you ask me.