Americas: December 2008 Archives

JetBlue chief executive Dave Barger likes the Caribbean at the moment. He told us that here at the Network Latin America event, organised by Airline Business and hosted by the Aruba Airport Authority on this lovely island.

Barger was a keynote speaker on Monday where he explained the carrier's Caribbean crusade, which actually will include Colombia, probably Mexico and probably a few other neat places as well.

Here's what I wrote for our sister online news service Air Transport Intelligence following Dave's comments:

HEADLINE: JetBlue evaluates 24 more Latin and Caribbean destinations

JetBlue Airways is examining the potential of 24 potential destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean as it continues its recent build-up of service in the region, says Dave Barger, the carrier's chief executive.

Speaking at the Network Latin America event being held on the Caribbean island of Aruba yesterday, Barger said the airline's "Caribbean campaign" of growth on these "North-South" routes from the US had been made possible by moving onto routes cut by network US carriers and by adding routes from gateways like Boston and Orlando.

"We find that when we go into these new markets we are truly stimulating the market," he told the audience of 200 airline planners and airport marketing executives. For examples its new routes from Tampa and Orlando to Cancun had been a good success.

"Let's not just hear about traditional city pairs, let's hear about those non-traditional markets too," he told airports interesting in attracting the carrier to serve their destinations.

"Hunkering down amidst a shaky US economy and volatile oil doesn't mean avoiding opportunities," he said. "Cutting overall costs, boosting ancillary revenue and restructuring the route map can allow carriers to take advantage of opportunities in the Caribbean and Latin America."

This year JetBlue has been reallocated capacity from unprofitable transcontinental markets to shorter-haul Caribbean ones where the returns are better, he said. In the third quarter of 2008 15% of its capacity was in the Caribbean, up from 12% in the same period in 2007.

Barger said JetBlue will announce a new route from Orlando to the Caribbean this week. Other new routes already announced are a service between Orlando and Bogota, Colombia that begins on 29 January and a service between Boston and the island of St Maarten on 14 February.

On 3 December it launched its first intra-Caribbean route between San Juan in Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

"JetBlue is also expanding into seven gates [from four] at Fort Lauderdale. These kind of mini hubs are just excellent opportunities to connect service," he said.

Barger said the carrier is also evaluating routes to Mexico. "I'm a patient guy but I'm getting impatient [about launching its first service into the the country]," he joked.

At the recent ALTA Latin Airline Leaders' Forum, where the Latin carrier CEOs gather for their annual meeting, we produced a daily paper.

Propped up against my laptop in readiness for this handover - see picture - I had a framed colour picture of our November cover. This featured none other than LAN CEO Enrique Cueto.

Now to a man, everyone who visited our office noticed this picture, and more specifically was amazed that we had been able to snap Mr Cueto smiling!

Enrique apparently has a reputation of being a tad glum, or at least not a smiley guy.

He is certainly private, as our interview shows, and certainly a deep thinker about this industry, as the interview shows too.

One thing that did get Enrique's attention during the Forum was a proposal that John Byerly, the US DoT's chief air services negotiator, had brought with him in draft form to the event.

John announced this document to the audience during an Open Skies panel I moderated at the Forum which included the DoT man. Enrique's eyes lit up at the proposal, which is all about waiving nationality restrictions.

The idea, as I understand it, is that if say Chile's LAN bought Brazil's GOL, the Brazilian carrier would still be able to retain its traffic rights to the USA. That is if all sides had signed up to the waiver. Under traditional bilaterals with nationality restrictions these traffic rights could be suspended, therefore making the deal less likely and interesting.

As Enrique is keen on developing cross border businesses in Latin America - eg LAN Ecuador, LAN Argentina, LAN Peru - you can see why.

I saw a hint of a smile on Enrique's face when this proposal was aired. See, it does happen.