Originally Posted by
sailingfun
AA had over 50 turboprops based in SJU and ran 18 to 22 mainline flights a day from the US. It was a massive operation. The vast majority of those turbo prop flights have not been replaced. As a example they ran 6 ATR’s per day from SJU to EIS. They operate nothing at EIS now. Flights from the mainland are way down. The local rumor was AA’s gate contracts were up for renegotiation and they wanted the same rates the airport was charging JetBlue. They threatened to pull out if they did not get the rates and the airport said no way and you won’t pull out. They were gone in 6 months.
Yes, I was trying to give a very brief explanation without going into details.
PR government, as always, trying to extract every posible cent lost a great operation.
The airport, at that time, was operated by PR government. AA said “I can do this from MIA”, then in 2011 when AA went BK the got rid of Executive Airlines and the whole Inter island operation. Then Seaborne got a massive expansion that didn’t worked as planned and merged with Silver Airways.
Now with Covid, I bet they would’ve got all the passengers because LiAT is barely surviving and just restarted service about a month ago.