JetBlue is continuing their exploration of different marketing ideas for bulk travel this winter, offering up “Go Packs” for customers making frequent trips in the intra-California market. The company is offering up fixed-price blocks of 10, 20 or 30 flight coupons, each valid for a one-way trip between their hub in Long Beach and the northern California airports of Sacramento, Oakland and San Francisco. The packs are priced between $70-90 per segment, plus $7 per flight at the time of actual booking for government fees.
The flight coupons are valid for last-seat availability on all flights, up to 90 minutes prior to departure. They are valid for travel between March 1 and May 23, 2012 and, perhaps most interesting for bulk ticket purchases, they are freely transferrable between passengers until the flight is actually booked. This means a company can purchase a block and then assign them out to employees on an as-needed basis rather than having all the seats in one passenger’s name. The TrueBlue points will accrue only to the account of the person making the purchase, not to the individual travelers on each flight. Packs must be purchased by February 22, 2012, or wihle supplies last.
With the last-seat availability and ability to assign the seats to any passenger up to 90 minutes before departure the packs are a great way to set fixed costs for the commuter travel. But they aren’t necessarily the cheapest rates. Booking today it is possible to purchase seats, even for walk-ups, at a lower per-ticket price on many days:
But those fares are not guaranteed to stay low and they certainly are not transferrable or as flexible as the Go Packs are. And, quite frankly, the price point is still very attractive, even a bit above the advance-purchase fares.
There are a few other markets on the east coast where such a marketing effort seems like it would be attractive, both for the company and the customers. Perhaps we’ll see more of this sort of thing in the future.
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UA offered something similar in 2010 (FlightPass). My offer was the following:
“Fly between Denver and the continental U.S.
* Purchase a 90-day Flight Pass membership for $450.
* During your membership period, you’ll pay $229* each way for First Class or $129 each way for Economy Class, every time you fly United or United Express to any destination in the continental 48 U.S., excluding Alaska.
* There is no advance purchase requirement. ”
They even allowed you to fly p.s. (DEN-SFO/LAX-JFK). If we had B6 in Kansas City, I’d certainly consider flying them, and might even go for one of their packages.