Originally Posted by
svergin
Your “industry leading” scope is because JB is not a network carrier. JB is a point to point carrier. Same with SW. Neither airline feeds a network. You just serve cities. Massive network carriers like American, Delta, United, etc all need feed from smaller cities that mainline aircraft can’t economically fly to. JB doesn’t fly to Bismark, Minot, Grand Forks, Lubbock, El Paso, etc because it doesn’t make financial sense to do it in an A-320. So some 50 seat jet flys in there and brings those passengers to ORD, DEN, DFW, ATL, etc and mainline flies them to Europe, etc. Scope sounds like something the company had no problem agreeing to because they didn’t intend to fly to those smaller cities anyway. If they did, you’d probably be able to grow much faster. Express carriers are a double-edged sword. You don’t want them, but you need them and they can be very good for you.
Don’t accept substandard wages because you think you got a scope win. Its going to be a very long wait for your next contract, and if that happens in a downturn, you’ll be stuck there for years. That’s what happened to us at Continental.
Jetblue doesn't have the global network that the Legacies have, but that wouldn't stop them from trying to fly some of those E190 routes with about a dozen or so E175's from Republic if they could do it. Boston to PIT, LGA, RDU, SYR, PHL, BUF.... would be very seemless on a regional-flown E175. Heck they could even hide their abysmal OTP on routes like JFK-BTV on their regional partners.
What size was AirTran in 2002 when they partnered with Air Wisconsin to start AirTran JetConnect? In the end it only lasted a couple years, but it goes to show that if it makes business sense and Scope allows it...they'll try it.