Spirit Grows Dallas/Ft Worth
Spirit has has now refocused on domestic flying, and DFW is getting a big new spot on the map. This expansion will see one flight per day to Atlanta, Boston, New York/La Guardia, and Orlando. It also announced a day later that it was going to add a daily flight to Mesa (outside of Phoenix) as well.

Let’s be clear on this one: this doesn’t hurt American much. Sure, it has the potential to siphon off some seriously price sensitive travelers on to Spirit, but American shouldn’t be targeting those people anyway. The flight times here aren’t very good with a redeye on the DFW-Boston and Mesa-DFW flights and some mid-day runs on the others. This isn’t going to pull off business travelers in any way, and I can’t imagine Spirit wants to do that. Just as it has tried to do in Chicago and in Vegas, Spirit sees an opportunity to go with super low fares and skim traffic off the bottom.

For Spirit, the timing was perfect. Spirit thrives on using outrageous slogans or promos to get free press. So when Spirit saw American file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it was too good to ignore. The press release makes that clear with references to a “new chapter in Dallas/Fort Worth’s history” along with $11 fares. You have to love an opportunistic airline. Spirit is like a parasite that lives off the misfortune of others – it’s brilliant.

This really shouldn’t be viewed as much of an assault on American, but many will draw the parallel. And American, like most legacy airlines, has nothing against irrational response so we’ll see where this goes. But American isn’t the only one that’s thinking about these moves. . . .

JetBlue Starts Boston to DFW
Another move that would seem to be more alarming to American is JetBlue’s decision to fly Boston to DFW three times daily. JetBlue has avoided DFW so far, and it has a strong relationship with American, so this might seem curious. Why is JetBlue doing this? I think it’s more about Spirit than American.

Is JetBlue trying to make a move on American’s turf? Well, it is doing that, but I don’t think it’s particularly targeting American. JetBlue stands to benefit through greater cooperation with American after the bankruptcy process wraps up, and it wants to be a strong partner. That makes this seem like an odd move.

And that’s why I think this is more about Spirit. JetBlue has previously been VERY aggressive at tackling ultra low cost carriers. When Allegiant announced it would begin flying from Long Beach to Las Vegas, JetBlue ramped up to offer 5 daily flights in the market and launched the additional flights with a $19 each way sale. Overkill? Yeah, probably. But then again, Allegiant pulled out.

JetBlue has tried a similar move with Spirit. Less than a week after Spirit announced it would do a daily flight from Chicago to Boston, JetBlue added a fourth flight on that route. While JetBlue doesn’t care about competing on Boston to Myrtle Beach and it probably accepts Spirit flying to its home base in Ft Lauderdale, it’s not going to be willing to sit there while Spirit moves in on other destinations. That’s why I think we’re seeing this move.

Delta Steals Gol from American
In a completely unrelated blow to American, Delta signed an “exclusive” deal with Brazil’s Gol to be the only US partner with the airline. That means that American’s current partnership with the airline is going to disappear. Delta paid a pretty hefty price to get in on this – it had to invest $100 million in Gol and now has a seat on the Board of Directors.

While I can’t imagine this has anything to do with American’s bankruptcy (this kind of agreement had to be be in the works long before), I do think it was more about Delta feeling a little desperate about Latin America. Avianca/TACA and COPA will all be in Star Alliance. Though I don’t think it’s been announced, the combined LAN and TAM have to pick an alliance, and the scuttlebutt is that they’re leaning toward oneworld (as they should). That leaves Delta with a messy Aerolineas Argentinas and absolutely no presence in the increasingly important Brazilian market. This was an effort to buy a place in that market, and it’s a place that American likely won’t need assuming LAN brings TAM into oneworld.

So, lots of moves that impact American recently, but it’s not a direct hit, as the title of this post says.

[Original surfer photo via Flickr user The Pug Father/CC 2.0]

At La Guardia, there were two bundles of 8 slot pairs being auctioned off. That means that two airlines will get the right to operate 8 takeoffs and 8 landings per day at good times. The bidders had to be either new entrants or airlines with very small presences at the airport already. One of the winners has been officially announced . . . WestJet.

That’s right. Those crazy Canucks are swooping in to fly 8 daily trips to La Guardia. It’s not a surprise that WestJet was interested. The rumors were that WestJet’s proposed partnership with Southwest ended over something closely related to La Guardia. See, WestJet wanted to be able to partner with multiple airlines in order to help feed its network. This was important at La Guardia, where Southwest couldn’t add much. Southwest supposedly didn’t want to see WestJet partner with anyone else. The partnership ended so that WestJet would be free to pursue a life of religious fulfillment, er, um, multiple partnerships.

Earlier this year, Delta launched an interline partnership with WestJet. I imagine we might see it get a little cozier now that Delta will have so many flights that could feed WestJet. Someone is going to need to fill those 8 flights, most if not all of which are undoubtedly bound for Toronto.

But what about the other eight? That’s a bit more of a mystery. Though it hasn’t officially been announced, Bloomberg reports that JetBlue won that bid. It also is said to have picked up the 8 slot pairs down at Washington/National as well. That’s a big win for the Blue Crew.

JetBlue’s interest should be no surprise. It already runs just shy of a dozen daily flights out of La Guardia to Ft Lauderdale, Orlando, and West Palm Beach. At National, it has nine with flights to Boston, Ft Lauderdale, and Orlando. This will help the airline expand its reach at those airports with a nice chunk of new slots.

So is anything surprising about this whole thing? You bet. The most surprising thing is that Southwest didn’t win anything. It has a gajillion* dollars in the bank (*rough estimate) and certainly could have outbid anyone if it wanted. It has made serving big cities a priority lately as a way to get its customers wherever they need to go in the US.

Southwest fought its way into La Guardia when it got 8 slot pairs there to start flights to Baltimore and Chicago. It gained more when it acquired AirTran, which has about 20 slot pairs. It acquired its first beachhead at National with AirTran’s 12 slots there. So you would think it would have been hungry for more, and in fact, it has expressed great interest in the past. It just somehow got outbid this time.

So, Southwest fans won’t be thrilled, but JetBlue lovers should be. There will be more JetBlue flights coming soon, assuming the deal gets done. And Canadians can rejoice that they will have another option to get to New York.

Now we just have to wait for all the “i’s” to be dotted and “t’s” crossed. Oh yeah, and we’re still waiting for final governmental approval in a couple areas. But things are starting to shape up nicely.

If you want to follow this closely, head on over to Things in the Sky. Dan Webb is keeping a close eye on this.

[Original photo via Flickr user Bob n Renee/CC 2.0]

We were staying right near Santa Rosa Airport, so we thought about flying on the LAX nonstop on Horizon, but it was double the price. Not worth it, especially since we could pay half and fly from Long Beach instead. Tickets were bought on September 5 for $181.40 each into Oakland and back from SFO because it was cheaper (even with the small drop charge on the car).

I got to the airport a little early and my wife met me there later. I parked myself in front of the always-packed wine bar and watched the beginning of game 5 in the Dbacks-Brewers series. As a die-hard Dbacks fan since day one, I was very glad to be flying JetBlue so I could continuously watch the game on my way up.

Boarding started about 45 minutes before departure, and we were the last couple people on. (Had to wait for the inning to end, of course.) There was plenty of bin space despite the full flight, and I quickly flipped on the game. Not sure how I got lucky, but there was some glitch that had the TVs working in the “F” seats without interruption. PA announcements didn’t freeze the picture, and we didn’t even have to endure the long “welcome on board” video after takeoff. The only downside was that my wife’s TV (and many others around her) didn’t work. The tried a “partial reset” but it didn’t work. Go figure.

We weaved through what seemed like a busy day of traffic in the LA Basin and landed in Oakland on time. This felt like a fast flight since I was riveted to the game the whole time. I even made my wife wait a couple minutes until the inning was over to get off. Then we ran to the car and listened as the Dbacks lose a great one in extra innings. Sad, but I’m really glad I got to watch what ended up being a great game.

On Sunday morning, we headed back down to SFO, and I got a little nervous as we sat in fog on our way down. SFO + fog = suck, but not that day. It cleared out nicely and we were right on time.

At the TSA checkpoint, they were using the backscatter machines. I’d used them before, and it doesn’t bug me, but I figured this would be a good time to suffer through a TSA pat down since I hadn’t done one yet. I opted out and was told to stand to the side. They let my wife go right through the metal detector (and nobody else). Maybe pregnant women aren’t sent through the advanced imaging machines?

The worst part was waiting and then being grilled. It took about 10 minutes before a guy finally came over. He asked why I was opting out, and I told him I didn’t want to do it. He pushed me again and asked why. I couldn’t believe I was getting this kind of pressure, and just told him that I didn’t know much about the effects of the machine and wanted to get a pat down instead. He marked something in a book, apparently explaining why I opted out, and then we went on.

Like I said, that was the worst part. The pat down was incredibly thorough with long, lingering strokes over all parts of the body, but the guy doing it was very professional and explained everything before he did it. Probably the most invasive part was when he ran his fingers inside my waist band, but again, didn’t really phase me. After, he told me to sit while he tested his gloves for what I assume was trace explosive residue. That was it, and we were off to the gate.

The gate agents were apparently in a very happy mood as they first congratulated a couple (via the electronic sign) that I assume got married. Their electronic boarding announcements were also punctuated with emoticons.

The guy taking boarding passes wasn’t nearly as friendly as the signs were. I asked him who Jeremy and Kerry (the couple receiving congrats) were, and he grumbled “I have no idea. This isn’t even my flight. I just came over here to help them out.” Ok.

As you can see, we got out early but landed late. What happened? It’s fleet week in San Francisco so they’ve restricted airspace to make room for all the demonstrations (Blue Angels and all). So we couldn’t take off from the usual runway 1L and instead had to taxi all the way out to 28L. That’s why we were delayed.

The flight was completely uneventful with beautiful views the whole way. My only complaint was around the TVs. As usual, the second we took off, they went into a long-winded welcome video. Then, as we sat off the coast, we couldn’t get a signal. There were a lot of agitated guys on the plane as the early NFL games were finishing up. Maybe 20 minutes into the flight, we got the TV signal back and a collective sigh of relief was heard.

After the early games were over, I flipped back to baseball. My favorite team after the Dbacks actually is the Brewers (picked them up when I moved to Chicago back in 2004, for some reason). So I found myself in the odd situation of rooting for the team I was rooting against just two days earlier.

We landed and taxied back to the south boarding lounge for the very last time. That’s right. The old JetBlue gates are being retired this week in favor of . . . more trailers. Seriously. They had to clear out the current one to build the new concourse, so there’s a brand new trailer park that you’ll probably see if you fly out of Long Beach on JetBlue in the next year or so.

The first flight cost $121.70 on JetBlue and the second $283.70 on Alaska. Both of those were reimbursed by the APEX folks. The last flight home cost $175.40 on Delta. (You might remember my decision-making process on this one.) Overall, it was a good trip.

This was the first September 11th I’d flown on since before THE September 11th ten years ago. Being the tenth anniversary, I figured I’d arrive early in case security was stepped up. That was totally unnecessary. We left from the northern gates at Long Beach and the security line was shorter than usual. The waiting room, however, was jam-packed.

With the construction at LGB, we had to walk for about 5 minutes before we got to our airplane. Once there, we boarded quickly – the flight was only about half full.

The flight itself was uneventful as we headed north. JetBlue struck a deal to show a sneak preview of that new Zooey Deschanel show “New Girl” before its network debut, so that was a nice change of pace. (Show isn’t bad, actually.)

Then I watched an hour of NFL Gameday before I had had enough. That’s when it got weird. I flipped to MSNBC where the network was replaying NBC’s coverage from September 11, 2001 in full. I have no idea why, but I couldn’t stop watching.

I saw the confusion when American 77 hit the Pentagon. Then I saw one of the towers fall. Seeing this from an airplane was surreal. I’m not sure why I didn’t shut it off. I kept watching until we arrived at our gate in Seattle.

Once there, I met up with a friend and hitched a ride into town for a very good time at APEX. By Thursday, it was time to move on.

I had never flown Alaska for a long haul before, so I was looking forward to it. I took the light rail to the airport and found an insanely long security line – took me I think about 30 minutes to get through.

Alaska had been kind enough to give me a lounge pass when I had visited the airline earlier that week, and I was happy to take it so I could see the lounge. But since it took so long to get through security, I only had about 15 minutes to spare.

I went into the lounge near gate D1 and it’s a nice two level lounge with a great view. I went straight upstairs to try the much-vaunted pancake machine. It was awesome. Then I grabbed a glass of water at the kitchen window (which reminded me of a middle school cafeteria, in a good way) and then headed off to my gate.

When I arrived, I found our AlaskaAir.com liveried aircraft already fully boarded. It was still very early, but I got on. Seattle had been murky and chilly all week, so I was looking forward to a little sun. We took off and got through the clouds fairly quickly. Unfortunately, clouds stayed under us for much of the trip toward the Great Lakes, an area over which I had never flown before.

Onboard, I planned on using wifi, and it was lightning-fast. Probably helps to be in a part of the country where very few airplanes are flying.

But I also got myself a DigEPlayer onboard – one of those standalone movie players. This was pretty good, and I enjoyed watching X-Men First Class, but there were a couple problems. The biggest issue was that I hardly had room for two devices on my tray. I needed a place to hang the DigEPlayer. But more concerning was the cost – it was $14 to rent that thing. Sheesh. I watched one movie and then couldn’t finish the second. That’s a lot of money to pay for 1.5 movies, even if it can access the internet as well.

After we went just north of Chicago, we aimed for Newark. A front was rolling through so there were a lot of clouds, some rain, and a bunch of wind. Our pilots deftly weaved us through the traffic, plunking us down hard on the runway nice and early . . . in Newark . . . when the weather was bad. Crazy.

I took the AirTrain to New Jersey Transit into the city and spent a couple of great days in New York. Thank you to everyone who chimed in with suggestions on Trippy.

After heading up to Tarrytown for a wedding, we headed to Westchester Airport for our flight home.

It was a beautiful day in New York as we headed to the airport. Westchester is such a tiny terminal, undoubtedly due to rich residents nearby refusing to build an adequate terminal to service the traffic. Instead, the check-in area is tiny with lines criss-crossing all over the place.

We went through the small security area fairly easily, but then we were sitting in the one big hold room where seats were just about completely full. There were four of us traveling together on this flight, and we had to settle for two seats in the waiting area until another flight boarded and seats opened up.

Our airplane, a former Horizon bird that’s now with Atlantic Southeast, pulled up right on time and we boarded the newly Delta-fied aircraft.

There are a few things I hate about the CRJ-700, and the biggest one is the tiny size of the bins. My bag was able to be wedged into the bin, but from the looks of all the open space, not many others were successful.

After a short air traffic control delay (which the captain dutifully kept us up to date on), we took off to the south and I took notice of the significant cabin noise from being in the back. We were just one row behind the exit, but it was really noisy.

We sat in light chop through a high cloud layer much of the way down to Atlanta. The seatbelt sign stayed off, however, and I was able to use the lav. It’s not really that small, but the engine noise is deafening, and this one was pretty dirty.

We landed almost on time despite having to loop around to land from the west. At that point, our two friends went off to their flight to San Francisco and we went to try to get an earlier flight home.

When I originally booked these tickets, the flight was a 757 with wifi. I was looking forward to being able to get some work done after pushing things off all week long as I traveled. That didn’t happen.

Our airplane was replaced with a 777. That’s usually not something to complain about, but I really needed to get work done. When the swap was first made, I called Delta to see if I could change my flight. The agent said I could, but she said that the earlier flight was an illegal connection with just under an hour. That’s actually completely legal, but I got busy with something else and never followed up again. So we stuck with our flight.

But when we got to Atlanta, we figured we’d try to stand by. We went from our C arrival gate to the B gates only to find an agent unwilling to even put us on the standby list it was so full. So we trekked back to the E gates for our original flight.

If there’s one thing I really don’t like about flying, it’s flying through storms. Yet sure enough, there was a big line heading east over Mississippi, and I was getting anxious about it.

This was not helped after we boarded the aircraft and the flight attendant repeated every 5 minutes that the captain said everyone would have to stay seated for the first hour due to rough air, so if anyone needed to go to the lav, they should go before we departed.

She was actually very good at keeping people informed, but it just raised my anxiety. (Yes, I know it’s silly, but I’ve yet to figure out a way to get my fear instinct to accept that.) When we took off, we pointed west and climbed to reach cruising altitude before we got to the weather.

In the end, it was a total non-event. We flew right in the cloud tops, and there was barely a bump. About 45 minutes in, the seatbelts signs were off and it was smooth sailing.

We went just north of Dallas and waited for drinks and food to arrive. It took well over an hour after the seatbelt sign went off before they reached our row in the middle of the coach cabin. I have no idea why they were so slow, but it was frustrating We were really thirsty, and I was hungry so I had a tasty roast chicken and red pepper sandwich.

I flipped on a movie but got bored quickly. The screen was a real pain to use anyway because the touch sensitivity seemed to be about an inch to the right from where it should have been.

But that was fine – I could still get some work done while not connected to the web, so I did that and watch out the window as we went far south, barely skirting along the Mexican border over El Paso.

We came up just north of Tucson and landed in LA a couple minutes early.

Carmageddon was supposed to result in epic gridlock thanks to the closing of the 405 freeway in a key spot between West LA and the San Fernando Valley. The freeway is being expanded and they had to knock down a bridge as part of that project. That required a weekend-long shutdown. The public awareness was tremendous, and in the end, the freeway reopened way early and there was no gridlock. Kudos certainly go to all the authorities involved for getting the word out so well that people stayed local this weekend.

But many of the warnings in advance were that there would be terrible gridlock. Every electronic road sign on every freeway flashed closure info. They even trotted out temporary signs. The local media had been covering it for weeks, and when it was given the name “Carmageddon,” it really stuck. Meanwhile, there had been a few efforts to figure out ways around the mess including discounted helicopter flights and things like that. JetBlue decided to jump in on Wednesday by offering two roundtrip flights between Burbank and Long Beach for cheap. Really cheap.

The flights were scheduled for Saturday afternoon and would cost only $4 all-in each way, $5 if you wanted to spring for extra legroom. Get it? 4 or 5 = 405. The flights sold out in less than three hours. In fact, JetBlue says that this was the fastest selling promotion it has ever launched.

Clearly JetBlue didn’t expect to make a profit on these flights alone. Each flight generated $642 in revenue. That’s enough to buy just over 200 gallons of fuel, and I bet the flight used even more than that. But that wasn’t the point. This was all about generating exposure, or as JetBlue said, “the value we are receiving beyond the publicity is earning new customers and educating the community on about all of the cities we serve. Our research shows that once a customer tries us, they become loyal fans!” If that’s the case, then this worked wonders.

The response was immediate. Within minutes, news vans had swarmed JetBlue’s operations in Burbank and Long Beach to cover the story. After so many weeks of covering the same boring stuff around the closure, this was a fun story that really hit the spot and was top story on several newscasts. The local coverage was priceless. JetBlue hasn’t been as visible in SoCal as it was during its early days, but this was a clear stand of solidarity with those who live here. JetBlue knows your pain, and JetBlue is going to try to relieve it and help you fly down to the beach.

Emails quickly flew through cyberspace – I had all kinds of friends sending me notes about this, asking if I’d be taking it. You might think that there could have been backlash from environmentalists decrying such a waste, but I saw none of that. In fact, environmentally-friendly transport lovers jumped on the bandwagon. A biking group called Wolfpack Hustle put together a challenge to see who could get from a location near Burbank Airport to the Long Beach Aquarium the fastest – someone who flew or someone who biked. The bikes won considering the drive time to the airport and the waiting time as well. That little wrinkle simply gave the story staying power. It was covered nonstop leading up to the flights. Of course, when the flights operated on Saturday, there was more coverage as well.

Even though this was a marketing coup, the idea didn’t come from marketing at all. According to JetBlue, it came from “a crewmember outside of the marketing department, and we ran with it!” I’m guessing it came from someone here in SoCal. JetBlue has a large presence with its Long Beach crew base, so it could have come from anyone, and hopefully they get a little thank you note, at the very least. There aren’t a lot of places where something like that could come together that quickly, but JetBlue is one of those places. This idea came up on Monday, was launched on Wednesday, and flew on Saturday.

On Saturdays, JetBlue has a thinner schedule in Burbank. One airplane comes in from JFK at 1118a and doesn’t leave for Vegas until 355p. So they stuck a roundtrip to Long Beach in there while it was on the ground. The next flight lands from Vegas at 555p but doesn’t go back to New York until 920p. They slotted another roundtrip to Long Beach in there. All they needed were crews to fly the extra legs, but with a Long Beach crew base, I can’t imagine that was hard to find for a little flightseeing around SoCal.

JetBlue even went to the FAA to make sure that it wouldn’t have any trouble getting a clear flight path through crowded air space. No problem.

The result was a well-liked promotion that got the airline coverage all over the US and even around the world. Excellent move.

Here’s what’s happening.

• JetBlue is ordering 40 A320neo aircraft. These are the re-engined A320s that offer fuel savings and greater range.
• JetBlue has 52 regular A320s on order now. Thirty of those will be converted to larger A321s and eight will be pushed back a couple years. All A320s will have winglets installed.
• JetBlue will grow its Embraer 190 fleet to only 75. Previously it was going to be 100 with options for more.

If there was any question where JetBlue was planning to go in the next few years, we know now the answer for sure. It starts with CEO Dave Barger’s BlueNote (internal memo) which says this:

I believe that our network strategy focused on Boston and the Caribbean/Latin America has given us the right to grow.

In other words, JFK is good but it’s not a huge growth opportunity. That’s largely an airport constraint, but it’s a reality. So growth will be in Boston (which has already been growing like crazy) and in the Caribbean/Latin America, where we’ve actually seen some pretty good growth as well. Everywhere else? It’s just going to be a matter of how they fit into these focus areas.

The upgrade to the A321 makes a lot of sense in this context. It’s a bigger airplane, and that means more seats. There are 150 seats on a JetBlue A320, and I’d bet we’d see about 30+ more on the A321. It costs less per seat to fly those airplanes, so for markets with high demand, it’s a no-brainer. To me, it seems that this airplane can do really well flying between the Northeast/South US and Latin/Caribbean markets. Those are markets that are highly leisure so they don’t need as much frequency. That’s why American used to fly its big old A300 aircraft down to the Caribbean. Load ‘em up and ship ‘em out.

Interestingly, JetBlue also sees an opportunity “in the potential application of the 321 on some of our heavy transcon markets such as JFK-LAX, JFK – San Francisco.” I can see some limited use there, but I expect the A321 won’t be seen on the west coast nearly as much. This does however highlight the shift in focus from Long Beach and Oakland to LAX and San Francisco for longer haul flights.

The A320neo, however, will likely fly west far more often. One of the problems JetBlue faces, especially during winter months when winds are strong, is a lack of range on the A320. This is particularly an issue for flights from Boston, which you’ll often see in cities like Vegas or Salt Lake because they ran out of gas on their way to California. The A320neo will give a range boost that will allow those airplanes to make it without any trouble.

Then again, this might not be necessary. With JetBlue also putting winglets on its current A320s, those airplanes should be able to make it as well. So the A320neo will just provide a more fuel efficient airplane that might make marginally unprofitable flights today a reality tomorrow. Or it could make wildly profitable flights even more wildly profitable. The reality is that if you want to order an A320 these days, you order the neo unless you have an urgent need in the next couple years. (You listening, Boeing? That 737 isn’t going to cut it for much longer.)

The last piece of this announcement is the Embraer 190. That really was David Neeleman’s baby as he envisioned opening up smaller markets with that plane and its 33 percent fewer seats than the A320. That dream is not the dream of JetBlue today, that’s for sure. The plan was originally to have around 100 Embraer 190s in the fleet (and there were options for more), but JetBlue is cutting that back to 75. This could be an alteration to the existing order, but it sounds like there might be a plan to instead lease out or sell 25 of the airplanes in one way or another.

The 190 is an interesting story. Many of its routes were failures – places like Columbus, Ohio and Nashville quickly disappeared when they just didn’t work. Now JetBlue thinks it’s found good placement for 75 of the airplanes but it doesn’t want any more than that. There are only 46 today, so there will still be more growth in the fleet, but it’s just not as rosy as the airline once thought. The 190 is taking a back seat.

To me, the upshot of this announcement is that JetBlue affirms its position as an east coast airline and it’s tailoring its fleet to fit the missions it wants to fly. The Boston-New York-Caribbean-Latin markets are clearly the focus. What about the west coast? Seems like we won’t be seeing much if anything out here. Maybe the A320neo will enable Hawai’i flying but that’s years away, and I wouldn’t count on it. Instead, the west cost will continue to be a spoke that feeds the east coast with the exception of the small short haul outpost in Long Beach. At least, that’s how it looks today.

JetBlue doesn’t do much flying in the middle of the country, so it’s no surprise to see very little of that type of flying happening in Long Beach. But it is surprising to see how few long hauls are left at the airport.

From Long Beach, JetBlue originally started with flights to New York in September 2001 and followed with Washington soon after. One year after starting at Long Beach, the first short haul began up to Oakland. But long hauls still remained the focus and didn’t start to really go away until early 2008.

Since that time, the drop in long haul flying has been dramatic. Here’s another way to look at it. Look at the number of daily departures from Long Beach to New York.

At one time, JetBlue flew eight daily flights between the two cities. That’s just unreal. It’s now down to just two daily, and at times even that second daily flight doesn’t run every day. Meanwhile, in June 2009, JetBlue started flying to LAX. Today, there are three flights most days from LAX to JFK and that number will rise to five daily this summer.

So what’s the story? When JetBlue started at Long Beach, people were willing to drive for the low fares, live television, and great service. But that’s because low fare, long haul trips were few and far between at LAX. JetBlue chose Long Beach for its lower costs and lack of competition. Today, things are very different.

Low fare service has gone into primary airports across the board. In the LA-New York market, Song showed up in 2005 before being merged back in to Delta. Now, Virgin America is the prime provider of low cost service to New York along with JetBlue (and a bunch of connecting options). The point is, people who prefer LAX do not have to drive to an alternate airport to get low fares anymore. So that changes the math at Long Beach.

JetBlue realized that with people not having to drive to Long Beach to get low fares, long haul flights wouldn’t be as lucrative down there. Besides, people coming from far away didn’t even know Long Beach and had a strong preference for LAX anyway. It moved into LAX in order to keep the traffic that used to be willing to go to Long Beach. But short haul is different.

Those who are traveling on shorter flights are less willing to drive to airports that are further away. So people that live in the heavily-populated area around Long Beach will drive to LAX if they’re going to New York, but they’re less likely to do it if it’s just a jaunt to Vegas or San Francisco. So JetBlue has repositioned Long Beach as a short haul-focused operation serving that community. Low fares are good, but it’s the convenience of the airport that makes it work best.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Long Beach couldn’t support any long haul flights, but JetBlue has to make a choice. Since Long Beach is heavily slot-restricted, JetBlue has to use its 30 daily flights in the best way possible. Considering the current dynamics in the industry, it decided that short haul is the way to go, so long haul will continue to migrate up the road to LAX.

Moving this Ft Lauderdale flight allows JetBlue to add yet another flight to Vegas. Apparently, JetBlue sees enough business traffic potential in this market that it is creating a business-type schedule instead of the afternoon-only leisure schedule that used to be in the market.

Yes, this is partially a response to Allegiant (JetBlue’s network planning chief tells me that the airline “competes hard”) but it’s also an effort to optimize its slots. And these days, short haul flying is far more optimal for secondary airports.

While Heathrow’s T5 is a monument to open space and design that cost £4.3 billion to build (more on this next week), JFK’s T5 is more about convenience and modesty at just $800 million. Both are great facilities in their own right, but the JetBlue facility is more up my alley.

I took the AirTrain in from the city, so I got off at the T5/T6 stop. As you may know, T6 is the former home of JetBlue, but it’s been empty since T5 opened and it will be demolished. So this really is only a T5 stop for now, but the stop requires going past the terminal and then walking back.

Once off the train, I had a great view of what remains of the old T5, the TWA terminal designed by Eero Saarinen. The distinctive shape still stands proud, though it’s currently unused. After getting off the train, a foot bridge winds its way past the TWA terminal and then descends into the far side of T5. It’s a long walk, which is bound to be inconvenient to many, but the views can’t be beat.

The first thing that struck me was how little space there is outside security. The ticketing area is long with high ceilings and it brackets the massive security line entrance in the middle. Security dominates much of the terminal area but it doesn’t seem intrusive. And there is plenty of room for the lines inside the terminal.

Once through security, I walked on a narrow side ramp into the heart of the terminal itself. The place really opens up nicely once you get beyond the metal detectors. The center area is in a triangular shape that has concourses going off to the left, right, and straight ahead. In the middle of the center area is a round electronic sign up high with messaging that you may have seen in press shots. Underneath it is an empty area where JetBlue has recently begun a concert series to entertain travelers. (I use the word “entertain” loosely since Taylor Swift and James Blunt aren’t exactly my style.)

Surrounding the center area is a food court on one side along with nice restaurants on the other. Shops and other restaurants ring around the edges as well. Though the area is indoors, the large restaurant seating in the open center almost gives it an outdoor cafe/walking street kind of feel with music in the background.

I was running a little late, so I didn’t have time to order food from one of the restaurants. I just had to grab something quickly. I was happy to see that there are small to-go places almost everywhere in the terminal so even when there are lines at the main restaurants, you can always find a way to grab something quickly and run to your airplane.

I picked up a turkey cranberry sandwich (which was really good, by the way) and then walked down the central concourse to get to my gate. The concourses look like what you’d expect out of a concourse but they have large skylights with a ton of natural light flooding in. The gate areas seem to have plenty of seating to make it a comfortable space.

When I reached the gate, they had just started boarding, so I got in line. The guy behind me was in his 20s and I heard him say, “I feel like I’m in the coolest terminal in the world and now I have to leave.” Something tells me he wouldn’t have been saying that had he been stuck in a legendary JFK delay. Fortunately, we went right on time.

Once onboard, I took my seat and it was just like any other JetBlue flight. We only had to taxi for 12 minutes before we were airborne into the gusty but clear New York day.

The lead flight attendant got on the horn and said that he knew it was a Friday afternoon and we were all anxious to get out of New York, so he wanted to treat us with free movies. When the response was muted, he said “I said ‘free movies’” and everyone started cheering.

Our route took us way north into Canada before crossing into Michigan and Wisconsin. Then we started heading down south and the snow-covered ground melted away. I did watch a movie and then I watched a bunch of bad TV, which is actually how I want to spend a flight.

They handed out a bunch of snacks and drinks as usual, and everyone got their full can of soda. (My whole row had ginger ale. We’re awesome.)

The short taxi time on the way out meant we landed nice and early in Long Beach. We taxied for three minutes, and I was at the curb in 5 more, ready to head home.

See more JFK T5 Photos