Originally Posted by dontsurf

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.

Originally Posted by Flyby1206

Hindsight is 20/20.

Looking back we should have just went gangbusters into LAX/SFO pre-VX when we had a chance. But JB was a small, financially fragile carrier that was already up to their necks in risk. SNA, even with lots of slot availability, is a terrible airport for what we needed to do considering we didn’t have a plane capable of making it to any of our east coast focus cities from there.

LGB made sense at the time. Overlooked slot-controlled airport with poor terminal infrastructure, but long runway, and a cooperative airport authority (at the time). Close proximity to Orange County $$$ and LA Basin.

The initial plan was for JB to scoop up all the Air Carrier slots which we would use for A320 service and also scoop up all of the Commuter Slots to fly the E190. That would have given us an additional 25 daily slots, which would have been a considerable add and would have allowed us to open a proper E190 domicile alongside the A320. Short haul west coast feed with the E190, and transcon with the A320.

Obviously things went south, the council got sour on JB, we violated noise regs, and the rest is history.

If the initial plan worked out, we would be about 60 daily flights, a new terminal and FIS, with almost no competition in one of the highest income areas of the country. Kind of like being 90% market share at HPN airport.

Originally Posted by dontsurf

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.

Originally Posted by Packrat

Don't forget the ONLY reason B6 even go into LGB was that Alaska abandoned the slots. They were originally Jet America.

Originally Posted by dontsurf

so many company apologists on this thread. it is easy to see none of you are based in lgb. the company has clearly and publicly failed to expand a true west coast presence in the 18 years they've been operating out here. that's just a fact. you can spin that however you want, i guess, to make yourselves feel better about the company you work for. i like working here at jetblue. but the company has no strategic vision when it comes to the west coast. if it did, and it was successful at implementing it, things would be a lot different and we would be a lot stronger on the west coast.

Originally Posted by deus ex machina

Don't worry, London is just around, the um, er... corner?

Originally Posted by dontsurf

so many company apologists on this thread. it is easy to see none of you are based in lgb. the company has clearly and publicly failed to expand a true west coast presence in the 18 years they've been operating out here. that's just a fact. you can spin that however you want, i guess, to make yourselves feel better about the company you work for. i like working here at jetblue. but the company has no strategic vision when it comes to the west coast. if it did, and it was successful at implementing it, things would be a lot different and we would be a lot stronger on the west coast.