January Schedule Reduction
 

I noticed looking over flights from 1/15 JFK to LAX Friday returning 1/18 LAX to JFK on Monday MLK Day, JetBlue has reduced their flight schedule again. They are only operating 3 non stop flights each way. The last flight on a Friday is a 4:30PM departure which seems lousy for people the are working in Manhattan and want to fly out after work.

To give a little perspective, JetBlue is scheduled to run 10 flights from JFK to LAX on Thursday May 27. Seems demand must have totally collapsed on this route. Strange JetBlue would pull back service on a holiday weekend when TSA reported over a million pax traveled on Friday 11/20 (highest amount since 10/18). This does not signal well for UAL returning to JFK to start service to LAX and SFO.

They’re probably expecting another nationwide shutdown January - March/April, or whatever WHO/CDC/magic 8 ball suggests. A lot of airlines had to reduce service during the last national lockdown.

Only operating 3 non stop flights on a holiday weekend between the two largest cities in the United States is concerning.

probably not a lot of people looking to take a 6 hour flight and wear a mask for 8 hours
plus newsom and cuomo will want to shut thing down again soon, who knows if 3 flights a day will even be too much by then

How is it concerning? It would be more concerning flying around empty planes while the pandemic is at its peak. AS is nearing a year of having no flights at all from LAX to JFK. There are no conferences anytime soon, business travel will be way down with lockdowns in LA and NY and travel to NYC in January is always at its lowest ebb in January for leisure purposes. Who exactly will fill up loads of flights in January? Better to reserve the cash for later in 2021 when there is more hope of vaccines being rolled out and warmer weather to enable people to spend more time outside.

With the 3rd wave, this is probably where the demand is at the moment. Their competition of DL is down to 4x and AA is down to 2x. On top of that, they still have 3 flights a day on EWR-LAX. Airlines are going to have a tough time until vaccines are widely available.

Maybe I'm out of touch with what "normal" people do over a 3-day weekend. Do many people take 5+ hours transcontinental flights over a 3-day weekend?

Personally, I doubt that Los Angeles is high on the list of leisure destinations for New Yorkers over the MLK Jr. holiday weekend. As such, trying to use this as a data point for relative health of a given airline seems suspect.

I once (actually twice I think) did a day trip to LA (and yes on leisure)... so never say never ;)

Though I think you are right in that they are just trying to better match capacity to demand.

-J.

They also increase to 4x daily in late January / early February, before reverting to the normal 10x schedule (which is probably unlikely to hold).

The first few weeks of January are traditionally fairly slow, I think — business travel always takes a little while to ramp up after the holidays. I've noticed them running *slightly* lighter schedules on some routes through about MLK day in the past.

Jan/Feb is also very much the "off season" for LA from a tourist perspective — weather there is not nearly as nice as in lots of places much closer to NYC.

So between the two, I wouldn't be surprised if those weeks are a low point for NYC-LA travel even in a normal year.

In my younger days, I'd often take flights from NY to LA just to have dinner with someone, then back on a red-eye. Mind you I still do that nowadays, but not as often...I am getting older :)