US Airways to Begin Serving Boston-San Juan Route

[ITRADE]

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030214/dcf015_1.html
Just looking at the seat maps, the flights down and back appear 95% sold out.
A winner route.

 

[ITRADE]

AA has at least 3 or so daily flights.

 

[Light Years]

I know TWA used to fly this route, does AA still do it?

 

[deelmakur]

Unless they have sold a bunch of inventory to a packager, you wonder what the logic is behind the decision to compete on a traditionally low yield route with guys who have a massive hub at the destination, and who are offering more than twice as many seats each day. Wasn't this the reason the LGA O&D routes to Florida were dumped?

 

[atc]

My guess is that many of the seats are sold in bulk as part of a cruise package.

Is this really a "low yield" route? My observation (US and AA) has been that San Juan flights are generally packed, with discounting rare. The current $250 fare is a definite anomaly. Additionally, Boston has the second largest mainland Puerto Rican population outside of New York.

 

[G4G5]

The lower fare is now the norm. Take a look at JetBlue JFK-SJU.

 

[ITRADE]

That's fine - for JFK.

BOS is an entirely different market with different pricing.

 

[mbmbbost]

[blockquote]
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On 2/15/2003 8:54:55 AM deelmakur wrote:

Unless they have sold a bunch of inventory to a packager, you wonder what the logic is behind the decision to compete on a traditionally low yield route with guys who have a massive hub at the destination, and who are offering more than twice as many seats each day. Wasn't this the reason the LGA O&D routes to Florida were dumped?
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[/blockquote]
Dumping popular but low-yield routes, or turning what should be a nonstop into a connecting flight isn't going to fix the problems at US anyway. Sometimes I suppose it's necessary, but it's been done too much already. It's obvious that as time goes by, more and more routes will become low yield, not the other way around. It just ticks off customers like me that miss the convenience, and leaves us with fewer and fewer reasons to remain loyal.

 

[autofixer]

How about DCA - SJU? It seems the mayor of DC likes to frequent SJU.

 

[ITRADE]

SJU is beyond the normal 1250 mile distance perimeter allowed for DCA.

It'd be interesting to see what would happen if US applied for a beyond perimeter exemption for DCA-SJU.

 

[Cosmo]

[blockquote]
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On 2/18/2003 929 AM ITRADE wrote:

It'd be interesting to see what would happen if US applied for a beyond perimeter exemption for DCA-SJU.
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[/blockquote]
At the moment, nothing would happen because:

1.) There are no beyond-perimeter slots currently available (Delta got the last one in December for DCA-SLC service); and

2.) The other (non-DCA) end of the route must be a hub with significant domestic flow traffic for the applying carrier -- unfortunately, SJU does not meet this criterion for US.