New City Announcement

[nostradamus]

Earlier poster

"I think most of you are too young to remember, right after deregulation, Braniff added 43 cities overnight. Funny, I don't see Braniff around any longer. It costs a lot of bucks to open a new city. Sure hope your low fares can pay for it."




Could the CEO be adding new cities to position himself as a desireable candidate, to be bought out by another airline in the near future? There are airplanes and gates but a very competitive future.

 

[javaboy]

Earlier poster

"I think most of you are too young to remember, right after deregulation, Braniff added 43 cities overnight. Funny, I don't see Braniff around any longer. It costs a lot of bucks to open a new city. Sure hope your low fares can pay for it."
Could the CEO be adding new cities to position himself as a desireable candidate, to be bought out by another airline in the near future? There are airplanes and gates but a very competitive future.

braniff was eliminated in 30days or so by the way it generated revenue. A young vp of the new information division had sold other airlines' tickets on the host airlines' reservation system, shortly after a phone call between the hire ups (think harding lawerance and his counter part) it was decided to have an all out "war"
with literally once press of a button, virutally all the Braniff flights were either not shown, or dropped to the very bottom of the display (think several pages before seeing a Braniff flight) 80% of the tickets were sold via travel agencies and now those flights weren't even on the screen, hence passengers, and revenue dried up, after a recent rapid expansion they had no way to service the debt and the tailspin began. That information (finance VP) was Robert Crandell.

JBLU does not sell its tickets that way (distrubtion system) while expansion may seem similar it is infact different. Essentially JB does not "pay" another party to sell its tickets the majority are sold online via its website the rest are via its own reservation system.

Cost to open a new city are not as high as they used to be, since the airline industry has contracted about 27% post 9/11, cities are more willing to "make deals" to bring in "competition" to help generate lower fares. Also with the unfortunate demise of some carriers, cities and/or airport authorities are stuck with gates that could be used to generate revenue to payoff bonds written a few years back, yeah they deal, and cost to open new cities has dropped accordingly.

🙂

 

[Harold]

Challenging Northwest in Butte and Fargo isn't a big deal, but if JetBlue moves into Detroit it would then show some guts by taking on BigRed at an NWA hub. JetBlue could sart out by sharing some gates with Spirit at DTW, then having their own space when the new terminal (eventually) opens in '08. DTW travellers would love to see a new airline come to town to give the much loathed NWA some competition.

 

[mneagle]

Challenging Northwest in Butte and Fargo isn't a big deal, but if JetBlue moves into Detroit it would then show some guts by taking on BigRed at an NWA hub. JetBlue could sart out by sharing some gates with Spirit at DTW, then having their own space when the new terminal (eventually) opens in '08. DTW travellers would love to see a new airline come to town to give the much loathed NWA some competition.

If you want to hit Big Red where it hurts, why not MSP???