2005/02/24
jetblue, we love you
According to the LA Times, the pioneering low-cost airline JetBlue will begin service in April between the Burbank Bob Hope Airport and its East Coast hub at John F Kennedy International Airport. As capacity is already at maximum at the little airport that could, JetBlue will be waiting for the now-defunct Aloha Airlines to vacate its current gate. This nonstop service will complement JetBlue's existing service from the Long Beach Airport, its West Coast hub. Between the two of them, there should be nine nonstop flights a day from the Los Angeles area to JFK.
This is good news for anyone, like your correspondent, who does a great deal of travelling between LA and NY, and has no desire to either (a) pay four hundred bucks for a nonstop from Delta or its ilk, or (b) pay $150 for some flight that routes through Wichita or Talahassee en route to my final destination. I'd rather just go for the hundred-dollar nonstop with leather seats. (JetBlue, we love you.) Indeed, the new nonstops between Burbank and JFK will debut at the stunningly double-digit price of $99.
The rather odd thing is that the City of Los Angeles evidently does not consider either Burbank or Long Beach to be part of its larger-scale airport infrastructure. A quick peek at the Los Angeles World Airports site (now there's a really silly name for a metropolitan transportation authority) shows only LAX, ONT, VNY, and PMD as elements of the system, translating to the Los Angeles, Ontario, Van Nuys, and Palmdale airports. Given that both Long Beach and Burbank do a hell of a lot more for passenger travel than Van Nuys or Palmdale, this breakdown seems pretty arbitrary. Palmdale is pretty much a non-entity as far as flights go, only receiving its first passenger plane in 2004. LA Airport planning has always been daft, but this really goes too far. Let's get off our high horse and embrace JetBlue's fine terminals with the same grace as the rest of our area airports. Without them, whither the City of Angels?
I mean: Long Beach is actually JetBlue's hub, for crying out loud. Doesn't that give it some kind of credit? Sigh. City bureaucrats.
