JetBlue,ATA,SWA Cause AMWest to Blink

[storminpilot]

http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2005/01/17/daily59.html

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LATEST NEWS
11:07 AM MST Friday

America West reconsiders transcontinental flights

Mike Sunnucks
The Business Journal
[font=Times New Roman,Times,Serif]High fuel costs and a tough overall airline sector has America West Airlines back-tracking from transcontinential flights between California and the east coast.

The Tempe-based carrier has dumped direct flights between San Francisco and Boston and New York and plans on not moving forward with other transcon flights.

America West had seen bicoastal direct flights as way to attract more business travel to top commercial hubs.

But AmWest executive vice president Scott Kirby said Friday the coast-to-coast flights had underperformed because of high fuel costs and tough sector dynamics.

"For now, we are shelving the expansion of the transcons to wait for better times," Kirby said.

America West will continue coast to coast flights between Los Angeles and New York and Boston.

The low-fare carrier had also looked at other transcon flights but is stepping back from that.

The move comes with New York-based Jet Blue Airways adding more flights between New York and California and Southwest Airlines entering a code-share agreement with ATA Airlines that esentailly puts SWA in new airports such as Honolulu, Denver, Boston Logan, New York LaGuardia, Washington National and Newark.

AmWest reported a $50 million quarterly loss on Friday and a $90 million annual loss mostly due to high fuel costs, said chairman Doug Parker.

America West (NYSE: AWA) is looking to focus its 2005 efforts on Las Vegas and flights to Mexican resorts and to withstand continued high fuel prices and big changes in the airline sector such as the Southwest/ATA code share and Delta Airlines fare restructuring.

For more: www.americawest.com.


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[Bandit21]

J Blue flies to JFK from OAK & LGB..


What AWA cancelled was from SFO, and that's a market that AMR & UAL have.

 

[UALjan15]

I got the impression that it was the price-matching and frequent flyer giveaways by UA and AA that kept AW from making money on these segments. No big surprise--transcons have been a staple of these 2 companies for as long as there have been jets that will go transcon. You knew they would soak up tremendous losses to keep a LCC from setting up a permanent presence on these "gravy routes."

 

[Cactus73]

We're not totally giving up. We are keeping our LAX to JFK and BOS routes as they are doing well.

American was the worst offender by paying their passengers to not fly us by giving away worldwide free tickets to anyone that flew them. AA also added hourly service with 767's. I guess they figured they could pay for the loses with more employee concessions and furloughs.