TravisMT81

Here are two stories recently in the Orlando Sentinel:

JetBlue extends Florida routes

by Jason Garcia on Feb 6, 2008 9:29:19 AM
Effective immediately, JetBlue Airways is extending a pair of flights from Orlando to the northeast from seasonal service to year-round. The flights link Orlando International Airport with Burlington, Vt., and Portland, Maine.

The Orlando flights are among half a dozen in Florida that JetBlue is increasing from seasonal to year-round. The rest: Fort Lauderdale to Charlotte, Raleigh, N.C., and Richmond, Va.; and Fort Myers to White Plains, N.Y.


JetBlue gets $10,000-a-month rent break at Orlando International Airport site
The 2 sides are discussing new lease terms that would push back the deadline to build an employee lodge.
Jason Garcia
Sentinel Staff Writer

February 1, 2008


Orlando International Airport is allowing JetBlue Airways Corp. to skip out on more than $10,000 a month in rent the airline should be paying to lease land for a still-unbuilt employee lodge.

JetBlue is spared the rent even though it has yet to begin construction of the $25 million, 292-room lodge, which was meant to provide accommodations for employees enrolled in the company's "JetBlue University" training center at OIA. The lodge was supposed to have opened by last September.

Airport officials say they are trying to help JetBlue, an 8-year-old airline that has struggled through an extended period of corporate upheaval but which has also developed a substantial presence in Orlando. Although the lodge has yet to get off the ground, JetBlue has already invested about $110 million constructing and outfitting the training center and a maintenance hangar for its LiveTV subsidiary at the airport.

OIA and JetBlue are now renegotiating the deal for the lodge property.

The goal "is to continue to get them to build and not necessarily to penalize," said Robert Ladd, OIA's senior director of commercial properties. "We can't lose sight of the big picture."

Representatives for JetBlue would not discuss the status of the lodge in detail. But company spokesman Bryan Baldwin said in an e-mail that "action will be taken by our executive leadership on this project" by the end of next week.

Even if that happens, don't expect the lodge to open soon. E-mails between airport officials and JetBlue executives reviewed by the Orlando Sentinel show the two sides are discussing new lease terms that would push the deadline to build the lodge back until the end of this September -- and possibly as late as February 2009.

A new deadline hasn't been finalized, and it would still have be approved by the board of the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, which runs OIA. But any extension is well beyond the timetable JetBlue outlined in June 2006, when company executives and local politicians had a public "groundbreaking" ceremony.

JetBlue's original deal with the airport, which took effect Oct. 19, 2005, called for the lodge to be built on 6.5 acres right next to its training center. JetBlue was to get the land rent-free until either it had finished building the lodge or until April 2007, eighteen months later -- whichever came first.

At that point, JetBlue was supposed to begin paying rent at a discounted rate of 21 cents a square foot, or about $5,000 a month. But if the lodge wasn't built by September 2007, the rent was supposed to more than double to about $10,600 a month.

The combined payments would have totaled nearly $70,000 by now.

The lodge was a victim of JetBlue's decision to slash growth amid sudden financial and employee turmoil. Once a Wall Street darling, the Forest Hills, N.Y.-based airline lost money in 2005 and 2006, then suffered an embarrassing meltdown during a Northeast ice storm in February 2007 that ultimately led to the exit of its founder and chief executive officer.

The company rebounded to a pre-tax profit of $41 million in 2007.

"Due to the volatile environment of the industry over the past year, the lag in moving this project forward has been disappointing to JetBlue at best," George Sauer, JetBlue's vice president of corporate real estate, wrote in an August letter to the airport requesting an extension. "However, we believe we see some light at the end of the tunnel."

Although it has chosen not to make JetBlue pay rent so far, the airport is considering stiffer penalties in exchange for granting an extension. Early drafts of an agreement would force JetBlue to pay a lump sum of about $170,000 -- the equivalent of a year's rent -- if the lodge isn't open by Sept. 30.

JetBlue could also be forced to pay between $200,000 and $500,000 if OIA begins preparing the lodge property for development -- building an access road, laying sewer lines and installing fire hydrants, among other changes -- and the lease is subsequently canceled.

JetBlue spokeswoman Alison Eshelman said in an e-mail that the company has a team working full-time on the lodge, and that the company is considering "alternative ways to finance the project most efficiently." One idea is to have a third party, such as a hotel developer, build the facility in exchange for a minimum room-rental guarantee from JetBlue.

Airport officials say they want to help however they can. They point out that JetBlue already employs about 350 people at the training center and LiveTV hangar. The airline also recently took over two more airfield gates -- giving it six in all -- and is in the midst of adding several new international flights to and from Orlando.

"They have proved to us time and time again that they will live up to our expectations," Ladd said. "We have every confidence in the world that they're going to work through this."

N830MH

B6 will gets some FL flights goes for year-round some routes from FLL-RIC/CLT/RDU & RSW-HPN and final is MCO-PWM/BTV. It will became goes all year-round long. I am already heard B6 has been done extremely very well. Here the press releasable from B6:

http://biz.yahoo.com/pz/080206/135735.html

Surely if B6 will gets more new routes from FLL anytime soon. I'll find out which specifiable routes will be next announced is coming soon.