Originally Posted by
seekingblue
I'll admit I'm over my head, but ALPA seems to disagree (unless I'm reading it wrong)
Can JetBlue use an operator such as JetSuite to provide feed under a Capacity Purchase Agreement?
No, agreed upon language prevents the Company from doing this. The Company is prohibited from entering into any Capacity Purchase Agreements or purchase Block Space on other carriers, and they cannot not purchase equity in, or lend to, another company that is an air carrier or an affiliate of an air carrier as a means to circumvent the provisions of our Scope agreement. Other provisions in scope prohibit JetBlue for using an entity like JetSuites as an alter ego or for doublebreasting
Look at the "prohibited to purchase block space" section. Thoughts?
Yes, not a complete answer at all.
We CAN and DO codeshare with JetSuiteX. That allows us to sell tickets onto JetSuiteX, not serve the route directly, and collect a portion of the ticket cost. It's the same thing we do on Air Lingus. Low-cost, low-risk way to serve markets without buying airplanes and serving the route ourselves.
Same as how we sell tickets onto Hawaiian Airlines to HNL so we don't have to get ETOPS. Same thing we will likely do with either Alaska or Moxy or both on domestic routes.
What we can't do is a Capacity Purchase Agreement. Which means we cannot have a regional in the traditional sense, although we could still codeshare with an existing or new RJ operator onto E170s or CRJ900s in the same way I described above.
A Capacity Purchase Agreement means we buy all the seats on an aircraft for all of the flights we contract them to do. When a mainline airline does that, they own and sell all the seats on their mainline website, they cover ALL the costs to provide that service, and collect all the ticket fares for that service.
For example, UAL might enter a 5 year Capacity Purchase Agreement with Skywest to operate 70 CRJ900s for a predetermined hourly rate. UAL pays Skywest for all costs (fuel, labor, training, aircraft rents, landing fees, etc) and controls the schedule and sells the tickets. Skywest just runs the regional under United Express's banner and under UALs schedule.
That we can't do, but that isn't the only way to skin a cat or the only threat to our careers/career progression.