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On 7/21/2003 10
05 AM MiAAmi wrote:
The new FLL international flights are very interesting if not a complete surprise. They talked about FLL-CCS a while back but it never materialized.
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FLL-CCS was announced back on 10 September 2001. Was to start 15Dec01, pushed back to 15Jun02, pushed back to 15Dec02, and then just canned. A lot of it had to with the crisis in Venezuela. But with CCS traffic now back to normal levels, I would not be shocked to see an FLL-CCS announcement in time for the summer 2004 travel season.
One major reason for it is to protect thier market and share and yield from Spirit Airlines, which is planning both FLL-SDQ and FLL-PAP. Thier first Caribbean/LatAm route (excluding the domestic MCO/FLL-SJU service), FLL-CUN, launches this fall. Spirit has been talking about this for a while, but they are finally taking the steps towards making it happen. They are also finally looking at replacing thier aging MD80s. AA is very protective of FLL, which is a good money maker for them because, once again, they have the huge Miami area FF base to work on and can run a very nice point-to-point route structure out of FLL because of it. When jetBlue announced FLL-LGB (which has been a smash hit and they are upping to two daily on 09Sep03 at the expense of an ATL-LGB flight), it took only a week for AA to add a midday FLL-LAX departure.
Another is simply to offer the huge FF base in Miami a more convienent option by way of Ft. Lauderdale. Also to note is that while Ft. Lauderdale''s Haitian and Dominican populations are smaller than those in Miami (62,000 Haitains in Lauderdale; probably about 40,000 Dominicans), but much wealthier (more than half of Lauderdale''s Dominican population is middle/upper class).
In addition to this new service, while FLL-STL goes from 3x to 1x daily, FLL-BOS goes from 1x to 3x daily (01Nov03 and then on 01Feb04).