Originally Posted by
hyperboy
If what we wanted to do was international flying which I don't disagree with you on. This was our plan and one that we worked hard on. Fact we had the votes the night before. Then the day of the vote things changed. What more should we have done? Offered "kneecappings" in the parking lot for an unfavorable vote?
okay, it seems that you are distilling 18 years of poor business decisions and lack of strategic west coast plans down to a recent city council vote.
just the very fact that our entire (at that time) hopes and dreams for a growing west coast operation hinged on a city council vote should tell you something about how pathetically our company operates out here.
jetblue has operated out of long beach for a long time. they've never had any kind of strategic plan. as for the west coast overall, as i pointed out, they treat this as a place that people from the east coast want to fly "to", as opposed to a place to fly "from".
maybe you and others on here don't know this, but right after the financial crash of 2008, orange county airport begged jetblue to fly out of there. they had just built a huge addition to the terminal space (50% increase) and needed a company with some sort of strategic plan to do business out of there. keep in mind this is an airport with one of the wealthiest surrounding areas in the country. people happily pay a premium to fly out of there instead of having to go to lax.
jetblue turned them down. we do not fly out of orange county at all. we are apparently now #4 on the list of airlines that want to fly out of there.
southwest stepped in and now run a hugely profitable operation out of there. that could have been us.
that is just one of the most glaring missteps in the 18 years history of west coast operations for jetblue.
and all you can talk about is some long beach city council vote? i don't get it.
jetblue just gave up 10 slots. other airlines will take those slots and use them and make money from them. jetblue failed to make money with those slots. we failed to make money flying from long beach with those slots. we could have created some kind of actual west coast operation just with those slots. but we failed to do so. this is not hyperbole. this is clear fact.
as for some other people's questions...no, this does not mean the base will shrink or go away. we had stopped using these slots already so the flying was already adjusted. there are more east coast guys doing our flying than long beach guys, it seems now. at any rate, just another failure by leadership of this company.