There has been a good amount of buzz floating around the airline world about the new JetAmerica – especially because of their introductory $9 fares. The airline, formally known as Sun America, Inc., held their first formal press conference at Toledo Express Airport in Ohio. The carrier announced plans to start service on July 13, 2009. The airline is a charter airline; they do not operate the flights themselves, rather Miami Air will fly the routes using Boeing 737-800s.
JetAmerican initially will serve the following airports: Lansing, MI; Melbourne, FL; Minneapolis, MN; Newark, NJ; South Bend, IN; and Toledo, OH. The first nine seats of every flight, for now, is listed as $9. For all the other seats, it looks as though $39 is the magic number. Don’t expect high frequency on routes – their are not too many options. Like SkyBus did and other low-cost carriers do, JetAmerica does not serve many mainline airports – they fly to airports within a good radius of the cities listed.
There is hope for expansion. The airline said they are considering flying to: Charleston, WV; Rockford, IL; Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton, OH; Greensboro, NC; Pittsburgh, PA; and Clearwater, FL. Yet, I’m curious to know how long they plan on having Miami Air fly their routes.
Interestingly enough, the carrier was called “Air Azul.” However, once David Neeleman launched Azul Brazilian Airlines, the name was scrapped. Apparently the idea of JetAmerica came from John Weikle – remember him? Yes, the guy that founded SkyBus Airlines.
The booking website does not have too much to it. There are not many descriptions, and it’s not a very user-friendly website for travelers to make reservations. Yet, we have to cut them some slack – they’re new.
I’m beginning to see their business model paralleling SkyBus (and we all know what happened to SkyBus). Some say that JetAmerica will become the “RyanAir of America.” They are not – they do not have ads all over their website / special deals with rental car companies and hotels. If anyone in America is like RyanAir, it’s Allegiant. I’m not going to speculate as to whether JetAmerica will last or not – I don’t think we know enough about their business model to make a judgement quite yet.
If the carrier markets themselves enough, and draws in a large crowd during the first weeks of operations, then there is a good chance the carrier will soar. However as of right now, it’s too early to tell – so book a flight while you can!
Image from Wikipedia.
The only problem I see with this is that they will (I hear) only be using one plane, and with the frequency as low as it is, it will be hard for them to turn a profit. But only time will tell.
Exactly. I think the frequency is a necessity for this industry – especially for business customers. One flight a day might just not do it for some.