Blogger: Could JetAmerica be Skybus 2.0?

May 8th, 2009 at 10:42am Thomas V. Bona

Cranky Flier picks up our story on The Airline Formerly Known as Air Azul changing its name to JetAmerica.

First off, he links the new airline to a defunct airline that made a splash (but no money) last year:

There’s something more significant at work here regarding the name. Jaunted has been covering the original Skybus founder John Weikle’s efforts to start a new airline for over a year. The name of that airline? JetAmerica.

You remember this one. It was supposed to be Skybus but out of Charleston, West Virginia. While I haven’t seen any confirmation of Weikle’s involvement in this one, the use of the name tells me that he will be involved with this bad boy somehow. Want another clue? Nine seats on each flight will be sold for $9. How very Skybussy.

I’ve asked about the Skybus link and no one will confirm it. But could Weikle - or someone close to him - be the new CEO? Worth watching.

Secondly, Cranky  - a well-respected and insightful blogger with his finger on the pulse of the industry - doesn’t think too much of JetAmerica’s propsects. Check out the photo illustration in his post…

At least one report says that all aircraft will be based in Toledo, though that statement was retracted by JetAmerica just as fast as it was announced. Oh boy.

Something tells me that the chance of this working is very, very slim. And that’s being kind. Let’s hope that it at least lasts longer than, well, Air Azul did . . . .

Obviously, the Rockford airport hopes it lasts. On the one hand, it’s low risk from a financial point of view: the airport’s only incentives for JetAmerica are waiving fees for an introductory period (a small amount of money it wouldn’t get anyway if the airline didn’t come) and marketing dollars for the new routes (but all RFD marketing also promotes the airport in general, in the hopes of drawing passengers for any route).

The question, as always, is how do you quantify the effect of having airlines come and go (or say they’ll come and not) and name changes and uncertainty? Festival Airlines is still a punchline around here. Does that make people less likely to try new service out of RFD, thus causing new service to underperform?  At some point, does it hurt RFD’s reputation. Or, conversely, does the constant effort to draw new airlines - regardless of the success rate - bring more passengers than sitting back and waiting for “sure things”? If RFD didn’t take chances, would it even have Allegiant Air or Apple Vacations? Would it have grown to 200,000 passengers a year?

Interesting questions. As always, keep watching.

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