Things in the Sky

Yesterday, JetBlue announced that they would launch four daily flights from Boston to Newark, starting in early May. It’s an interesting move, considering that the airline’s current service is only to leisure destinations, with five dailies to Orlando, three to Lauderdale, and one each to West Palm, Fort Myers, and Tampa.

The timing of the launch and the announcement certainly would make one think that the move is motivated by Southwest’s announcement that it will be coming to Newark next year. I do wonder if Southwest has looked at the market. While doing Boston – NYC would be difficult out of LaGuardia with only eight slots – it does have more flexibility at Newark with 18.

Either way, I like what JetBlue’s doing here – just look at this data from the Consumer Air Fare Report (Table 1A) for the first quarter of this year:

Basically the same amount of passengers as JFK at fares that are 165% higher. Nice.  Lots of Continental’s passengers  on its BOS-EWR flights are connecting, but for those who are traveling between the two cities the airline is making a killing.

So what does this do to JetBlue’s existing service? Well, right now the airline has eight flights to JFK, but when Newark starts there will only be six, so that shrinks a bit.

But I’m interested in how JetBlue does here. It seems they can really stimulate demand, but Continental sports a much more robust schedule here, too.

I am also wondering where the Newark slots are coming from. Is the Florida service getting trimmed down? Or is JetBlue acquiring them in another way? No official comment from JetBlue on that front yet.

Note: JetBlue’s press release reported a DOT number of $280 for EWR. Not exactly sure where it’s coming from, but for consistency’s sake I’m using the number from the report.