Dylan: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Read Time:3 Minute, 51 Second
The Good
Worcester is once again connected with Central FL, and now seasonally will provide service to all three parts of Florida. Historically, ORH has always provided strong service to Florida, even with no-name carriers like Direct Air. The Fort Myers flight is only twice-weekly service for several months before moving to daily service the last month or so of the season. Fort Myers has been one of the most requested destinations at ORH for years and provided strong service for several years in the 2010’s to Ft. Myers-Punta Gorda.
P.S., the new Terminal C in Orlando is beautiful! A must see, honestly, for all travelers. We are excited for this service and honestly would be surprised to see Fort Myers not exceed expectations.
The Bad
What Massport and JetBlue failed to tell you the other day is that these flights will replace the existing JFK flights, going from three daily flights to two. So yes, in fact, Worcester actually loses air service out of this! While still underperforming, these flights have shown growth over the years, the early morning flight going out consistently full. The unfortunate reality is that these JFK flights provided twice-daily service to Florida (as well as across the country, London/Paris/Amsterdam, and many American connections) with a quick 30-minute flight and pit stop in New York. 20 years without connection service, people in Central MA have been conditioned to jump through hurdles paying far more than they must for direct flights.
This is the culmination of Massport’s brutal failure to essentially re-educate the community about the benefits of connection service. JetBlue deserves none of the blame here, the service was essentially invisible during its entire tenure. Emerging from COVID, they gave Worcester exactly what we needed. Is there even a marketing department for the airport? (I wish I had their jobs, do nothing and get paid for it). The two JFK flights were at perfect times and always affordable, even with strong connections to American Airlines. But how many people in the community knew that? Apparently, not many. It is disappointing in many ways, as the low cost to operate the flight provided the opportunity to build a low-risk and reliable service for many years.
Moving Forward
In a way, this move leaves the other NYC flights out to dry, especially the already-struggling American flight to JFK. The flight was designed to be integrated into the JetBlue booking system and vice-versa, however at no point did any of JetBlue’s ORH flights show up in American’s system. This severely limited the booking options and defeated the whole purpose of the flight entirely. We must believe Massport is aware of this – how can you not? The results have shown (parental advisory – these numbers are alarming):
source: aviationdb.com
2022 Load Factors, ORH-JFK
January – 7% (lol)
February – 28%
March – 22%
April – 38%
May – 33%
June – 26%
July – 25%
August – 26%
September – 17% (!!!)
October – 19%
November – 25%
December – 22%
The Delta numbers to LGA are a little better, but not by much. To give you an idea of the gap, a standard load factor for sustainable service at the regional level has always been believed to be around 70-75%. At literally any other airport, these numbers would have pulled these flights a long time ago. It’s a paradox; with a second flight these numbers would drastically improve, but there is no incentive with the current numbers for either American or Delta to oblige. But good thing we have Massport!
The extreme lack of connectivity leaves the current NYC flights (1 x AA to JFK, 1 x DL to LGA six days a week) essentially only for people traveling to and from New York. For example, most if not all of American’s international flights arrive AFTER the ORH flight leaves New York (which in the past wouldn’t have been a big deal if the evening JetBlue flight showed up in American’s system!). This NYC service needs a second flight to provide passengers the ability to leave and return to ORH, plain and simple. That just does not exist at the moment. Now that there are no early morning departures out of ORH, the times are not ideal, the service not as reliable, and more passengers will end up out of Logan than before.
Really, to summarize for the TLDR people, the next goal for ORH needs to be an overnight flight from both American and Delta to New York, while JetBlue does the Florida work!
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
4 thoughts on “Dylan: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”
Comments are closed.
The JFK Flights were great, connecting ORH to the rest of the country and internationally. Specially since the morning ORH-JFK flight was actually starting to do good. Its sad to see these JFK flights being cut. Hopefully jetBlue can reinstate these flights in the future.
Florida flights are great, but now without the JFK flights, ORH lost the options to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Austin, London, Paris, Dubai, etc… which were all possible before. That’s the problem by losing the JFK flights, and big mistake by the city of Worcester and Massport by not advertising correctly the JFK flights.
Now ideally, we should hope that AA can add a second JFK flight or add Charlotte as a destination which is full of connecting options; Same with Delta, Massport should try pushing for Atlanta flights, in order to provide ORH other destinations. That would provide great connecting destinations out Worcester.
Some airlines/flights that hopefully Massport is actively trying to attract at least a couple to ORH.
-Delta to Atlanta (ATL)
-AA to Charlotte (CLT)
-United to Newark (EWR)
-jetBlue to Tampa (TPA)
-Avelo to Durham (RDU)
-Breeze to Charleston (CHS)
American will never be successful at ORH flying to JFK. They need to switch that flight to DC or Charlotte. The integration with Jetblue has clearly not worked. Flying to Florida and several other destinations on American out of ORH requires 2 and sometimes 3 stops. I also just looked and discovered that the only Florida destination American flies to out of JFK is Miami. That is why every other destination requires multiple stops. A switch to DC or Charlotte would open up a lot more possibilities.
This is new news to hear that we all were mistaken about. Since the MCO flight is coming back, JetBlue is completely getting rid of their JFK flights once the Orlando flight starts. American will still fly to JFK but it’s still crappy that JetBlue is getting rid of the JFK flight entirely. 6/14 is the last day of the JetBlue JFK flight. The airport is looking to hire more TSA agents and then add a second security checkpoint at the airport so more seating can be added inside the airport which definitely is needed especially with 3 big routes flying next year.
Honestly, I see this announcement yesterday as a loss for ORH and central Mass, and not as it is being portrayed to be as a win by the officials. Seems as Massport and city officials just buried the news about cutting the JFK flights entirely, and making a big deal of a seasonal flight that will initiate twice weekly nine months from now on Fort Myers. Not that the Fort Myers flight is not good news for the airport, but in reality ORH lost flights and a multitude of connections/destinations that it had with the JFK flights.
Fort Myers and Orlando will definitely do good, don’t get me wrong, but the price to pay, is that this is all ORH has along with Fort Lauderdale. Basically ORH is back to 2013, and it is hard to believe that after 10 years with jetBlue at ORH, that’s all it is being offered. Delta and America with those two flights and times, just does not work; and jetBlue is unwilling to add more then 3 destinations/flights at the airport. Basically a lot of people will look to other airports now without the morning JFK Flight.