Virgin America To Launch New Flights To Newark Liberty International Airport

[jonjuan]

Out of EWR. JFK to SFO is already covered by the 3 legacies and 2 LCCs. EWR is currently done by only one legacy, UA.

Sure, but that's not really considered a monopoly as there are 2 other airports within 20 miles that fly thousands of seats between SFO and NYC daily. In any case, expect UA, DAL, AMR to respond to any additional capacity being added between the two cities.

 

[Flyer1015]

Sure, but that's not really considered a monopoly as there are 2 other airports within 20 miles that fly thousands of seats between SFO and NYC daily. In any case, expect UA, DAL, AMR to respond to any additional capacity being added between the two cities.

NYC is all 3 airports. There are customers who'd prefer to fly out of EWR and would be willing to pay more to do so. LGA can't do SFO/LAX. Only JFK and EWR can. So far, all the legacies do JFK to LAX/SFO. It's the EWR to California market that is only one airline. Now, it will be two. It was a monopoly when you look at the route pair (EWR).

 

[bri5150]

UAL just announced changes to its schedules:

EWR-LAX changed from 6x to 14x daily flights
EWR-SFO changed from 7x to 16x daily flights

What happened with the FI prophets on this one? Another fantastic hind sight thread. Necro reading these things is waaaay better than reading the 50 bazillion jetBlue hating threads.

 

[ackattacker]

I don't know exactly what's going but I just searched for a weekday roundtrip EWR-SFO 2 weeks out and it was $311.80 taxes and fees included. Exact same price United or Virgin America. Nobody is making money at those prices I'm guessing.

 

[bri5150]

I don't know exactly what's going but I just searched for a weekday roundtrip EWR-SFO 2 weeks out and it was $311.80 taxes and fees included. Exact same price United or Virgin America. Nobody is making money at those prices I'm guessing.

Maybe not at that exact fare, but it is one of our best routes at this point. It took about 3 months to mature for us. Maybe it's because of leisure travel for Thanksgiving? What exact day did you search?

http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2013/08/newark_liberty_helps_virgin_am.html

 

[ackattacker]

Maybe not at that exact fare, but it is one of our best routes at this point. It took about 3 months to mature for us. Maybe it's because of leisure travel for Thanksgiving? What exact day did you search?

http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2013/08/newark_liberty_helps_virgin_am.html

I searched for Dec 4th through 6th. A bit more than 2 weeks, but I didn't want the Holiday screwing with the results. A tried a few more dates with varied results, some as high as $600 round trip but the $300 fare seems pretty common.

I read that link you provided, and David Cush's words seem very carefully crafted. He never claims the route is profitable, he says "are performing ahead of forecasts" and seeing "early signs of profitability", and have "a revenue share in excess of it's share of capacity". These are all statements which sound quite optimistic but tell us nothing.

EDIT: To be fair, I do get similar prices when I check JFK-SFO and BOS-SFO so I guess maybe those dates are just light travel days. Still seems pretty cheap for a transcon these days.

 

[bri5150]

I searched for Dec 4th through 6th. A bit more than 2 weeks, but I didn't want the Holiday screwing with the results. A tried a few more dates with varied results, some as high as $600 round trip but the $300 fare seems pretty common.

I read that link you provided, and David Cush's words seem very carefully crafted. He never claims the route is profitable, he says "are performing ahead of forecasts" and seeing "early signs of profitability", and have "a revenue share in excess of it's share of capacity". These are all statements which sound quite optimistic but tell us nothing.

EDIT: To be fair, I do get similar prices when I check JFK-SFO and BOS-SFO so I guess maybe those dates are just light travel days. Still seems pretty cheap for a transcon these days.

Agreed, but the article is from a while back. I don't have an exact breakdown of our routes, but how different routes are doing is generally passed through the pilot group. We heard directly from the CEO that all the routes in the entire network are "pulling their weight", so at a minimum it is breaking even. Like I said before though, I have heard many times it is one of our more profitable routes.