I wonder if JetBlue will ever "promise" to keep our BlueBasic deal on those very few routes in the market. Seems like another ADDITIONAL way to take the wind out of the DOJs sails, to the point of a settlement.

It's pretty much free (promises are free)... Most of the big airlines also have something similar to Blue Basic to compete minimally with ULCC carriers. Would be no problem promising to keep it.

Reminds me of the industry before the ZED system was developed. Some airlines gamed the ID90 system (90% off your published coach fare on a given route) for employees of other airlines.

I once went to ID90 on an Air New Zealand flt from HNL to AKL and the ID90 fare was like $650 one way! Air New Zealand published a "coach fare" on that route of $6500 despite the fact that you could buy a first class ticket at the time for less than $2000 and coach tickets to the public were like $350 each way.

So just because you publish a fare, doesn't mean there are any/many tickets sold at that price.

That wasn't very nice of them. Why would they even do that?
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Not for sure, but suspect because some of the smaller airlines wanted to be part of the ID90 system of the time, but didn't want to have bigger airlines sending a lot of employees for very cheap fares on their metal. This is why the whole industry migrated to the ZED system for calculating "other airline interline" discounts around circa 2007/8 with the invent of the internet ticketing.

As an aside, to procure and use ID90 tix was a royal pain as well. You had to go to YOUR companies ticket counter and find the one agent that may remember where the binder was that reminded them how to issue them. You then paid the money and got paper tickets in advance. If you did this as a backup (or needed other airline tickets to backup), they had to repeat this process for each passenger. You had to get tix for any company/leg you MAY need in advance especially if going to a destination not served by your company because there was no way to procure the paper ticket except from your own company agent.

Then if you didn't end up using them, you again had to take them to your own companies ticket counter, hopefully without too much of a line, and stand there as they inputted at least 200 key strokes to effect a refund for each paper ticket. They did have an address where you could mail them and hope they were received and credited as well, but either way the current internet ZED system is sooooooo much user friendly and fair as it doesn't allow airlines to game the price, they either participate or not.

That sounds awful.

YES be thankful for the current industry ZED setup…. You would have to set out on ur journey with a pocket full of ID90s!

I remember actually doing that, am I an old fart now? 😬

Get off my lawn! I just waxed it.

Jesus, don't give my neighbor any ****ing ideas.