Worcester Patch: Worcester JetBlue Flights To FL: That Did Not Age Well

8 thoughts on “Worcester Patch: Worcester JetBlue Flights To FL: That Did Not Age Well”

1. Been saying this since the announcement, losing JetBlue’s JFK flights is a big loss for ORH and Central MA. ORH lost almost all of the domestic and international connections thru JFK. At the time people were happy to get Fort Myers and Orlando, but it never made any sense to me.
   For one, Fort Myers is starting 8 months from now and as a seasonal flight. How can ORH be happy with this is beyond me.
   Second, Orlando should’ve been restated along with Fort Lauderdale when JetBlue initiated the flights after the pandemic.
   Third, JetBlue’s policy of keeping only 3 flights will never help develop ORH as an option for travelers.
   Now American and Delta, keeping bad departure flight times, is not helping the airport either, it actually hurts ORH by only providing options for flights to NYC as a final destination basically. Load factors are horrible for both airlines, due to the fact that we can’t connect to anywhere with AA and Delta.
   Hopefully something changes soon, and JetBlue decides to add more than 3 flights a day, and AA and Delta change the destination to Charlotte and Atlanta respectively or at least earlier departure times to NYC.

2. Delta provides multiple direct connections from LaGuardia including to Florida. LaGuardia does limit connections to the eastern half of the U.S. but still has a ton of options. They have changed their departure time to 3:20 which works out well. Delta is now comfortably above 50%.

   American on the other had is really struggling. They for sure need to change their destination but I doubt they will. Direct connections to Dallas, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Dulles, Los Angeles and a few others do offer some options. I still think we should be able to fill these seats, American could offer JB connections on their website which would help. I still don’t understand why this hasn’t happened yet.

3. I look at this blog once a day, I enjoy reading the post. I would like to thank the owner of the blog for prompting questions in regards to Worcester Airport and other aviation news. Realistically, jetblue could bid Worcester a farewell, they are just apeasing Massport. JetBlue is spending $$ to keep flights running at Worcester. Worcester, not just Worcester Airport biggest problem, we are only 45 min away from the 8th busiest airport and world class city in the country. We have non stop trains that leave Worcester three times a day. People who live in the Broughs, including Upton, Grafton, etc can get to Logan faster. I’m not bashing Worcester Airport, I want the airport to grow, maybe because I own a home in south Florida, along with other 3-5 thousand Worcester people that own property in the Broward county area. Yes, we have a lot of development in Worcester regarding apartment buildings going up left and right. Rent is going north in Worcester as well. This is all happening because BOSTON is to expensive. I was reading an article 100,000 k in Boston = 46K. Developers are heading to Worcester because there is know more land to build in Boston. Take a ride down Washington street in JP, they are knocking buildings down on both sides of the street and building luxury buildings that are renting out at 4-6k per month. Boston people are moving to Worcester because they are desperate, they can’t afford Boston rents. I was in the north end of Boston last Sunday the place was shoulder to shoulder, I drove to Worcester around 6 pm and Shrewsbury street was a ghost town. I’m a very lucky guy, I live in both places 5-6 days a week in Boston and 1-2 in Worcester. We need to stop begging JB for more flights, they made their play, we need to attract Breeze, Frontier, Avelo. Worcester needs a solid commitment from an airlines, and Massport needs to give them the keys to the place. If we go into a recession, Worcester Airport is done! JB will pull the plug, they have stock holder to answer too. The JB stock trades around 7 usd per share. Loosing JFK was a huge blow, we took 2 steps forward with Orlando and FT. Myers and ten steps back loosing JFK. By the way nobody goes Ft. Myers from central Ma, we are east coast of Florida community. People from central part and western part of the US go to Ft. Myers.

1. I live at Tatnuck Sq and have never, NEVER been able to drive to Logan in 45 minutes.

1. Residents of Worcester who live on the EAST side of Worcester, next to beautiful lake park area, can get to Boston in 45 min.

4. The problem with the Delta flight is that it’s too late in the day. Connecting at LaGuardia gets you to Florida too late. There’s no appeal to me to get into West Palm Beach, Tampa, etc. at almost 11pm. I’d much rather fly out early from Providence and get to Florida in time for lunch.

   I’m not even going to waste any time on the ORH American flight other than to say just cancel it already.

   I think the JetBlue flight to Fort Myers will do fine. Unfortunately, JetBlue only seems to be interested in doing the bare minimum at ORH in order to appease Massport to get what they want at Logan.

   Also, I just started working with a client on a project in Bridgeport, CT so I drive down there for the day from Worcester once a week. On the way I pass through New Haven and there are Avelo billboards all over from just South of Hartford all the way down 91 and on 95 to Bridgeport. There’s a huge one right next to my jobsite. Avelo has obviously done a good job putting New Haven Airport back on the map. I know they have had some growing pains but they must be doing something right as they reached 1 million passengers in about 15 months. What did it take Worcester to do that number? About 10 years? What a joke.

5. Passenger loads for today:

   Delta
   LGA-ORH: 51/76 = 67%
   ORH-LGA: 42/76 = 56%

   AA
   JFK-ORH: 42/76 = 56%
   ORH-JFK: 24/76 = 32% (Ouch it’s Friday)

6. JetBlue and American ordered in court to end Northeast Alliance in next 30 days. Very little impact to ORH since American’s flight didn’t line up with JetBlue’s to book flights from JFK (after the ORH flight) but still a bit of a loss. Can’t make that reason about why American’s flight isn’t working. It’s clearly location to JFK and that’s it. They should realize now they need a destination change. Why have they not tried DCA I still wonder. I don’t expect with the alliance being done that flight to get any better even with it being the only flight to JFK.

   In other news, I wish JetBlue would do a seasonal flight to JFK like they do at Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Hyannis, and Portland. They run a flight from May to October/November to there and back and ORH would benefit from that because if this Fort Myers flight is still seasonal, then that leaves one more flight JetBlue can have without its own crews. It’s dumb that we’re going to now have the lowest amount of daily flights since covid from June to December this year. On Saturdays, we will only have 3 departures and 3 arrivals that’s it.

   What I wish we could see is American switch to DCA and JetBlue have one flight to JFK. The times for the flights is JetBlue leaves at noon and arrives for 100 then leaves at 145 and is scheduled back for 245. JFK for JetBlue those times work perfectly because they have a lot more connections than American and most Florida destinations your connection time would be less than 2 hours which would give ample time to get food, go to the bathroom off the plane, get to the gate, and check out the airport (JetBlue does have a post security outdoor area that you can go too if you have a ticket obviously). The times as well give plenty of times for people to get to JFK then connect to ORH. I did this with delta and LGA last year (flight left Florida 7am got to LGA around 10am and left LGA at 12pm and got back to ORH around 1245)

   For American, almost same thing. Leave DCA at 1030am arrive at ORH for 1215. Leave ORH at 100 and arrive at DCA for 245. That would be optimal or it can leave ORH first thing in the morning and arrive back at ORH late at night. Both of those would work. Hard part about DCA is finding the right connection times but the time I mentioned would work best. Anything later wouldn’t work for going to your destination and anything earlier wouldn’t work for getting to ORH

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