Tag Archives for jetblue.
JetBlue staff boarded a flight in Jamaica to question a passenger who was seated about traveling without a ticket. The passenger didn’t take kindly to be questioned, threatening to throw down: “Mek mi f**k-up one a unuh in yah.”
His video is captioned, “POV: you have 0 patience when getting off planes.” As soon as the seat belt sign turns off on this JetBlue flight, he’s in action, grabbing his belongings and running as fast as he can before the plane’s aisle fills up with passengers.
The federal government argued that JetBlue is an important competitor to keep independent, in part for its low prices and for the passenger demand that it stimulates, when they wanted to break up the carrier’s partnership with American Airlines. JetBlue was the antidote to major airlines, and wanted to keep them from being co-opted.
Now, JetBlue says in court, the government shouldn’t be allowed to switch positions as it seeks to prevent them from acquiring Spirit Airlines.
Investment banking firm T.D. Cowen says that with the airline not appealing the anti-trust ruling against their American Airlines partnership, an anti-trust settlement allowing their Spirit Airlines acquisition to move forward may be in the offing after Labor Day or at least in advance of a trial set to begin in October.
JetBlue’s deal to buy Spirit Airlines isn’t just being challenged by the government. There’s a civil suit as well, because why not piggy back on government opposition for a payday? Only lawyers made an oops in redactions – and as a result exposed “internal company estimates of plans to hike fares on Spirit planes by as much as 40%.” And this could make JetBlue’s defense of the deal against government anti-trust charges that much harder.
American Airlines has just pulled the trigger on one more element of unwinding the partnership. The airline no longer has access to seat maps for JetBlue flights. They can’t assign seats for customers who booked through them, and have to tell customers to contact JetBlue for seat assignments.
The court wasn’t looking to impose a ‘bait and switch’. The airlines initially argued for a long wind-down of the partnership, to which the government objected. The position of American and JetBlue was, our IT systems aren’t set up to base benefits and mileage-earning on date of ticket purchase rather than date flown. So they couldn’t just grandfather old tickets.
That wasn’t flying as a reason to prolong the partnership. Instead what the two airlines came up with eliminating the ability to add each others’ frequent flyer account numbers to reservations.
During their second quarter earnings call, Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja explained why they believe they’ll still succeed in New York, without their alliance with JetBlue.
American Airlines internal reference materials show that they’ve begun the wind-down process for the Northeast Alliance.
American Airlines and JetBlue basically asked the judge to do what the judge suggested would have been permissible: codeshare and partner through their frequent flyer programs. That helps retain some competitiveness in the New York market, attracting customers away from the biggest players Delta and United.
The government though wants the partnership itself fully terminated, not only the parts that were found to be anti-competitive.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
