Archive for July 2nd, 2009
July 2nd, 2009
According to Today in the Sky, JetAmerica is saying it has to delay its launch by a month because the Federal Aviation Administration reneged on its original assurance that the airline didn’t need to obtain slots to operate at Newark. According to Brian Burling, the airline’s VP of operations:
“However, at about the same time JetAmerica started making national news with its $9 non-stop fares; when JetAmerica announced 60,000 website visitors; and sales in excess of 20,000 the FAA re-clarified its policy telling JetAmerica we would need to obtain slots.”
It seems weird that the FAA would care about whether an airline had strong early sales. Maybe this was a case of miscommunication … it’ll be interesting to see what response, if any, the FAA has.
July 2nd, 2009
Cranky Flier confirms that JetAmerica is delaying its launch another month. It has sent a letter to its customers saying it will refund tickets sold before Aug. 14 (check the bottom of the post and the comments section for the letter):
Unfortunately, however, you are receiving this notice to inform you that due to landing slot issues in Newark, that we are going to have to delay our first flights 30 days until August 14th. When we started planning your flight months ago, we were not required as an Indirect Air Carrier to have landing and takeoff slots at Newark’s Liberty International Airport; however, due to recent policy clarifications, even Indirect Air Carriers now have to have slots into and out of Newark. We just found out about this on May 30th and have been working hard to acquire the slots from the FAA and other airlines.
“Policy clarifications”? Is that like when my boss “clarifies” that I have to get a story done on time? Weird stuff.
July 2nd, 2009
It’s always fun when, a few weeks before your new airline launches, your reservation system decides to stop booking flights for the first month of service. That’s Jaunted’s report on JetAmerica’s latest problem with its beleaguered launch.
A tipster emailed us to say that it looks like JetAmerica cancelled all of their July flights. Sure enough, when we went to search for a flight on July 15 we were shown the next available date was August 14. Then when we tried again, the next available date was suddenly August 16. What is happening here?
Since we actually have a reservation on Jet America in July, we dialed their odd 727 area code reservations number hoping for answers. While we were on hold for over 10 minutes we were repeatedly prompted to email Michelle for “marketing inquiries”, odd for a reservation number, right? Oh, and at the 11 minute mark we got our answers.
JetAmerica: There is a problem with our server, it is only booking flights for August and September, IT says all should be fixed by end of day tomorrow.
Jaunted: So flights in July are still wheels up?
JetAmerica: As far as I know, yeah.
Meanwhile, Cranky Flier continues to be none too confident in the Airline Formerly Known as Air Azul’s chances of success:
I wouldn’t think about spending a penny until I see an airplane in the air on an actual flight with passengers. Something tells me that the chances of that actually happening has just dropped dramatically.
Maybe Rockford didn’t miss out on much…
July 2nd, 2009
Allegiant Air - the biggest airline at RFD - had three incidents in recent months elsewhere involving engine troubles, and while nobody was hurt, the events understandably freaked out passengers.
In an article today, the Las Vegas Review Journal notes that in the age of Twitter and email, “even an airline with a safe and profitable system can have trouble keeping pace with the spread of information, particularly if the information is dramatic, like a first-hand account of a troubled commercial jet flight.”
According to the article, Allegiant isn’t considered to blame for the engine troubles - it’s kind of dumb luck, apparently. It has a lower cancelation rate - for mechanical reasons or otherwise - than the average at the nation’s biggest airports. And the engines it uses have a very low number of accident/incident reports in the past two decades.
Allegiant, for its part, says it’s reviewing how it communicates with passengers in such incidents.
