JSX has announced a significant expansion to their schedule, with three new and returning seasonal airports, in what to me is one of their most aggressive and exciting moves.

They’re re-entering seasonal Salt Lake City, and adding New York – Florida from convenient and underserved airports with flights beginning in late November and into December.

• Salt Lake City: Burbank, Denver BJC, Las Vegas, Scottsdale
  
• West Palm Beach: Westchester, Morristown NJ
  
• Naples, Florida: Westchester, Morristown NJ

Naples, Florida is an airport I’ve been writing for years is underserved and that someone needs to figure out how to make work. It’s just two miles from central Naples, far more convenient than flying into Fort Myers.

The airport doesn’t currently have commercial service, but used to see American Eagle flights from Miami (ceased before 9/11); US Airways Express service to Tampa (which ended in 2003); and Delta Connection flights to Atlanta in the mid-aughts among others. The end of 30-seat turboprop flying for major airlines made the airport challenging even with revenue guarantees from the city.

Meanwhile, West Palm Beach is the preferred airport for many New Yorkers heading to South Florida – and is in addition to returning seasonal Boca Raton – with both working for points north of Fort Lauderdale. JSX’s operation had been pushed out of Miami to Opa Locka. Westchester is great for hedge fund business, and Morristown is a reasonable alternative to Newark.

These Northeast – Florida routes are definitely considered long haul for JSX, at 1,056 – 1,127 miles, close but not the longest in their system.

Enilria points out two things about these routes:

• To date, JSX has largely steered away from directly competing with Delta (other than using a New York-area airport to Florida, for instance, and Southern California to Las Vegas). Now they’re adding Delta hub Salt Lake City to their route map, with four flights out of a Delta hub.

  Delta has been largely silent on JSX’s business model. Delta-controlled WheelsUp has sold individual seats on scheduled flights using a similar model to JSX, though thathasn’t been a core part of their operation.

• JSX’s growth plans is a lot of what has attracted so much attention from competitors trying to get the government to put them out of business. “I would guess that JSX has been limiting expansion to keep a low profile prior to the FAA decision, but now has decided to go down swinging.” The FAA plans to move forward with doing the bidding of ALPA, American Airlines and Southwest but that just means they will publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, take and respond to comments as required, and then potentially publish a final rule. We’re still a long way off from actually seeing a new rule.

JSX shared this potential route map at their media day a year ago, and that they had enough aircraft parked and waiting for the investment to convert to their interior to roughly double their fleet. Embraer E-145s, a disfavored fleet type, are generally cheap to acquire.

JSX offers departures from private terminals, allowing you to show up just 20 minutes before your flight even with checked bags. They put 30 first class seats into what are usually 50 seat planes, and offer free checked bags; free drinks and snacks (more substantive on longer flights); and free StarLink wifi.

When they served Austin I preferred them over American for flights to Dallas even when I was an American Airlines ConciergeKey and preferred flying with them over Southwest from Dallas Love Field even with Rapid Rewards status.