Here's a great quote from Hawaiian CEO Mark Dunkerley.
Delta codeshares with Hawaiian for inter-island flying, so you would think when HA flies to the mainland, Delta would get the chance to provide connections, but alas, HA selected JetBlue for domestic codeshare in NYC.
Better yet, citing the reason why Hawaiian would enter the NYC market, Hawaiian CEO Dunkerley points to the capacity constraint improving yields on domestic connections feeding Hawaii flights.
"One of the reasons why we didn't serve this market over the course of the last decade, and indeed why nobody did, is yields on the continental portion of a connecting itinerary to Hawaii were low," says Dunkerley. "As a consequence the trip cost to Hawaii was unattractive." But now Dunkerley concludes that in a world "in which domestic continental yields are going up, the yields for Hawaii are firming. We now believe that the fare and cost environment is attractive."
Delta's guidance is showing capacity cut by 2% for 2012 to support further yield improvements. On the other hand JetBlue guidance for 2012 shows capacity up 5.5%-7.5% for 2012. Delta's course of capacity constraint is improving domestic yields for all airlines. JetBlue is taking advantage of it by growing twice as fast as we are shrinking. On top of that Delta's codeshare partner in Hawaii, now is codeshareing with JetBlue on the mainland...
I'm not against codeshare arrangements per-se, in-fact I believe there are many instances where codeshare provides a mutually beneficial relationship for the corporation and for the pilots.
Unfortunately the number of Delta pax placed on codeshare carriers far exceeds the number of codeshare pax placed on Delta. An the net result is displacements all around while the corporation is making record profits.
This needs to be fixed!
Cheers
George