JetBlue Eyes Burbank Airport
JetBlue Airways Corp., the discount airline, will add coast-to-coast service from Burbank in late May, people familiar with the plans said Wednesday.
In a move that would mean the first nonstop flights between Burbank and the East Coast, the discount airline intends to launch three daily nonstops between Bob Hope Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport -- JetBlue’s home base -- on May 24, the sources said. They said a fourth daily flight was scheduled to be added in July.
The announcement could come as early as today, they said. Representatives of JetBlue and the Burbank airport declined to comment.
The nonstop transcontinental market was once the near-exclusive territory of the big U.S. carriers: AMR Corp.’s American, UAL Corp.’s United and Delta Air Lines Inc. But smaller, aggressive rivals increasingly have been poaching in their domain.
Industry observers have theorized that airlines have resisted offering service between the 75-year-old Burbank airport and the East Coast because they feared cannibalizing their nonstop transcontinental flights from Los Angeles International Airport.
That isn’t an issue for JetBlue because it doesn’t use LAX. JetBlue’s nonstop flights to New York, Boston and Washington take off from Long Beach Airport, JetBlue’s West Coast hub.
Right now, seven airlines serve Bob Hope Airport, which handled 4.9 million passengers last year.
Under an agreement with the city of Burbank, the airport can’t add to its gates. But Aloha Airlines, which filed for bankruptcy reorganization in December, is leaving Burbank in early April and its gate at the Terminal A concourse presumably would be available for JetBlue.
Founded five years ago by David Neeleman, its chief executive, JetBlue has rapidly expanded yet stayed profitable while most of the airline industry has suffered massive losses.
JetBlue has 292 daily flights to 30 cities in 12 states along with Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. Six of its destinations are in California.
The airline’s annual revenue topped $1 billion for the first time last year.
The company has prospered by keeping costs low -- its 7,500 employees aren’t unionized, unlike those at most airlines -- and by offering amenities such as leather seats, a television for every passenger and low fares. It’s often described as having a cult status among many travelers.
JetBlue’s fares between Long Beach and New York typically range from $99 to $299 each way, depending on advance-purchase discounts and various sales offered by the carrier. The same fare range is expected to apply to the Burbank-New York flights, excluding security fees and taxes, the sources said.
By comparison, the one-way fare on a Delta Air Lines flight for May 24 from Burbank to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, with a stop in Atlanta, was $159, a check of Delta’s website showed Wednesday. A United Airlines flight the same day from Burbank to LaGuardia, with a stop in Denver, was $270.
The fares drop for nonstop flights from LAX to New York’s Kennedy. Song, a low-fare airline operated by Delta, showed a one-way fare of $134 on May 24, and American Airlines had a flight for $154.
Indeed, widespread fare cutting by those airlines and others, along with soaring fuel costs and the growth of discount competitors such as Southwest Airlines Inc. and AirTran Airways, have pinched JetBlue’s bottom line over the last year.
In 2004, JetBlue’s profit tumbled 54% to $47.5 million from $103.9 million the prior year, despite a 27% jump in revenue to $1.27 billion from $998.4 million.
Nonetheless, Neeleman told analysts last month that “we will have a significant amount of growth in the next two years, the next five years really.”
