Brigri

Ok, I was just looking at fares and I can't believe the JFK-LAX loads, have numerous sell-outs or very close to sell-outs in the next week or so. I think this move was brilliant and I can see some growth here. The market is clearly telling B6, give us more. I think it's time to crush Virgin America as they are running 4-5 flights a day. There is room for another run here. Let's see how the summer plays out, but so far so so good!

Long Distance

Unless you work for jetBlue why would YOU want to crush another airline?

Less competition, means YOU pay more, MUCH MORE!

sbm12

Ummm....seriously? It really only works if the flights are full and the yields are sufficient to derive profit from the flights. Otherwise you're just losing money faster.

Not necessarily much more and at some point a carrier is going to fail. Putting someone else out of business rather than failing yourself isn't necessarily a bad thing.

rasheed

I happen to be in a need for a lot of SoCal to NYC/WAS area flights (and vice-versa) over the next few weeks, and here is what I saw based on my purchasing power.

-VX removing that first free bag was a terrible choice. Just terrible. In addition, they are not pricing themselves much cheaper (or any cheaper) than B6. LAX tends to be cheaper than LGB due to competition. Cool, but I still wish there was more ONT or related service.

-I would prefer to fly legacies (AA/UA) for mileage purposes, but the only airline who was filing low fares was Delta, and I wasn't very interested. No free bag makes it even worse for total pricing.

-Southwest does not compete in the trans-con markets. Would be my first choice (and I do the stop in Vegas on the way to NYC or rather ISP thing), but their one-way is really high as it is not how they price themselves. But a good use of a FF award otherwise.

I find the FF program of B6 is pretty forgettable for my purposes, but I am glad B6 widely distributes their tickets (and VX does too) so that it is easy to price compare.

Rasheed

sbm12

I think that basing your ticket purchase habits on the $15-25 fee for a checked bag makes you very much an outlier in the realm of passengers.

WN only prices one-ways, not round-trips, so I'm not really sure what you're talking about there. True, they are not always the cheapest. But they haven't been for some time. That is brand marketing, not reality.

I agree that the legacy FF programs have the most potential but being able to realize that potential is much harder. That's a decision you have to make in terms of how much you're willing to invest.

ellinj

My BOS-LAX flight next month still looks to less then half full based on seat assignments.

jetBlueNYFL

Seats will no doubtedly sell over the course of one month for a route such as BOS-LAX. Additionally, one flight's seat map a month out is not a great indicator of route performance. Some seats aren't assigned as well.

Seat13c

Business routes sell differently than leisure routes. Leisure route fill up father out and business routes keeping selling even the day of.

ex: I was on a CO flight a couple years ago EWR-ORD. 10 days out, the flight was only about 50% full. When I showed up for my flight, there was 1 empty seat.

Brigri

This is definetely a more business oriented route, so it will fill up closer in to the flight. I know the load is not an indicator of how successful the route is but if they are getting $599 with 5 seats left on the aircraft, that is looking pretty good on a yield basis. Don't forget, fuel is way down this year vs. last so we'll see.