Airline formerly known as Air Azul know formerly known as JetAmerica

July 20th, 2009 at 11:39am Thomas V. Bona

First Air Azul came and went. Now, JetAmerica has come and gone, at least “indefinitely”.

“We are reluctantly suspending our public charter operations effective today,” said John Weikle, CEO, who has been with the company since April. “Finalizing the slots required to support our charter program at Newark has taken longer than expected and we have decided to suspend our operations in order to refocus on different markets. We still strongly believe that there is an unmet need for affordable air service to secondary markets and we look forward to offering this option again in the near future,” concluded Weikle.

Bet Chicago Rockford International Airport officials are glad they didn’t have to shell out marketing dollars for an airline that never took off. Though, under the category “Hope springs eternal, RFD still has pages for New York City and Baltimore/Washington. Guess those won’t be with JetAmerica, at least.

What’s interesting is the “refocus on different markets” caveat by Weikle. Maybe they’ll try Florida, which was part of Air Azul’s original plan. Or maybe they’ll do BWI. Who knows. It just seems NYC is out.

You can bet RFD folks will be skittish if Weikle wants to bring his next idea here, at least if he wants money to do it. A subsidy is out, I’m sure, and even extra marketing money could be in doubt - on the one hand, RFD folks like to “market the destination, not the airline”  but they’ve been burned by startups before.

If there was a no cash opportunity, I’m sure RFD would consider biting. But otherwise, they’ll remember what happened to the Toledo airport:

The port authority spent $119,000 on advertising and other marketing assistance to promote JetAmerica, money it stands to lose unless the carrier somehow establishes service to another New York-area airport that qualifies under the terms of a Small Cities Air Service grant the agency obtained to support Toledo-New York flights. “It’s unfortunate because the carrier’s not going to come here,” said Carla Firestone, a port authority spokesman. The silver lining, she said, is that the port authority “spent almost all of those dollars right here in the community” on local billboards and media advertising.

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