Tweet From August

6 thoughts on “Tweet From August”

1. Worcester should have 10 flights out and in per day. I mentioned Puerto Rico leaving at night returning early morning heading down to FLL. Tweed is doing it.

2. Interesting thing on JetBlue today. Was looking at future flights for JetBlue and I noticed that once daily flights return February 15th, the aircraft for the Orlando flight is getting downgraded and the A320 won’t be flying the route from February 15th to April 30th. Good news is it’s only losing 22 seats. JetBlue currently has planned for the new A220 to be doing the Orlando flight for that span. While losing a handful of seats isn’t the best, I think the A220 is one of those aircraft that benefit everyone especially because one side has 3 seats the other has 2 so if your an independent traveler, you can have only one person sit next to you. Plus the A220 is a lot newer and quieter as well. I think it’ll be great that the plane is flying to Orlando from Worcester and is the perfect size for the flight. Just hoping the 5x a week flights finally end on that week and we go back to daily. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are also the cheapest days to fly as well so losing those days isn’t the best and can be a little more money for families. I don’t think the runway work is to blame. They’re working on the runway from 7pm to 11am the next day 6 days a week and are expected to be done in November but who knows (you can’t really do much repaving in the winter when all of the asphalt plants are closed)

3. Plants are open all year. A plant in Oxford is open all year. The average JetBlue a320 is 16 years old. A220 run out of Boston. If you read articles pertaining to regional airports across the US, airlines are pulling back service do to pilot shortages, and plane age. JB is buying spirit because of plane age and pilots. Spirit has newer planes and pilots. Boston at one time flew to FLL 8 times a day non-stop, they cut that back because of plane age and retiring pilots.

4. Some small things to add, Tues/Wed flights are not scheduled to return (if the booking site is to go off of) until next year. Spare some select weeks such as Xmas Week, etc. Also, starting Feb 14th thru the rest of the month & for the month of March, RSW flights are showing as bookable daily, not just 2x a week. So that’s a plus, at least they kept their word on that front. Still a shame their only 2x a week for January & 1st 1/2 of February. Ideally, RSW would become a year-round affair, but only time will tell. Aircraft shortages are playing a major role in ORH’s JB flight schedule currently.

5. The thing with the A220 is it’s suppose to be the E190 replacement and it’s not going to be permanently locked up doing routes only out of Boston and only operate out of that airport. Even JFK has A220 flights to Kansas City and Milwaukee. Of course things are subject to change but it won’t be a surprise if they stick with that plane as scheduled until it’s suppose to start in February. Jetblue is also planning to use it from Orlando to Providence as well. Remember, we didn’t get daily a320 service from Florida until last year and that was partially because of JetBlue ramping up the E190 retirement. There’s only a handful of routes that use the E190 that are longer than 2 hours. Everything else is the daily shuttles out of Boston or JFK to destinations like Baltimore, DC, Philly, etc.
   The logic behind it is understanding as well, if JetBlue from the middle of February to the end of April is averaging 70% loads which I would expect it too because that time of year, most families will only fly on school vacation weeks (look at Thursday before school vacation for Worcester public, that plane is almost sold out already and we’re 4 1/2 months away and it’s $571 for a ticket), so when the rest of the time where it’s probably around 60% loads with the A320, it makes perfect sense to use the A220 since less seats available would make the load factor higher if the same amount of seats are booked plus the A220 is one of the if not the cheapest aircraft to operate that JetBlue has (the A321 Neo might beat it, not 100% sure, it’s 30% cheaper to operate an A220 than E190).
   Once JetBlue receives all of its A220s (remember they’ve ordered 100) regardless of what happens with the spirit deal, you’re going to see them start using it more and more on routes that currently have the A320 operating it especially out west where it’s all A320s. Although the A220 is only scheduled from ORH to MCO from February 15th to April 30th, it wouldn’t be any surprise if we see the A220 in the future during lower demand months doing the Florida routes in and out of ORH.

6. Its all about profit and the stockholders, you need to show good load percentages to keep planes flying routes. Take a look at Breeze, they are opening up routes and pulling out of routes, perspective passenger’s can’t keep up.

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