Originally Posted by
Nevets
They analyzed dozens of market pairs that had no current airline serving those city pairs. They picked the ones they thought would have the best chance at success.
I think he meant that XJT doesn't sell the $19 fares that I believe FlyI was selling. There will always be "low" fares in the 21 day bucket to attract traffic to any airline.
No current service, medium sized cities, X number of people already traveling between the two cities through another connecting city.
XJT is not trying to be a LCC. That is not the model they are pursuing. There will be "low" (probably never anything as low as FlyI had) fares to begin with to attract a customer base. The plan is to get the average fare up about 20%.
I like XJT's approach with their branded flying but it’s unfortunate that if and when XJT stumbles upon a really hot route that SWA will soon follow and we all know that XJT can’t compete with SWA. As long as the markets are to thin for SWA but busy enough to support an ERJ and if the fuel prices can stay well below 100/barrel, then XJT will do just fine. They won't make a killing and they won't be able to move their entire fleet over if CAL cuts them loose, but they should be able to turn a profit in the future.
It's obvious that XJT’s not run by a bunch of idiots, like FLYI was.