JetBlue Retaliates To Southwest's Latest Boston Escalation

November 4, 2009 at 10:29 AM | by Omri | 0 Comments

Now this is just getting silly. The dustup at Logan was already the most interesting battle in the airline industry, with Southwest turning the turf war into a bloodbath and pushing out major carriers like US Airways. JetBlue—which considers Boston home turf—isn't going to be shoved aside as easily. They're retaliating by increasing their Boston flights by a full 30 percent.

Southwest recently broadsided JetBlue and AirTran by adding two daily roundtrips, for a total of seven, between Boston and Baltimore. That bumped up the total number of BOS-BWI dailies to 20. Given that 20 is probably way more than necessary, an outside observer might guess that Southwest was just trying to spite their rivals.

This has now become the equivalent of a poker table where everyone throws in their cards as two or three players—all of them completely on tilt—switch from trying to win the pot to trying to punish each other. Someone is going to lose big but, at least for the folks watching, the players' swagger and blustering is pure entertainment:

JetBlue said Thursday it will boost its service from Boston Logan by 30 percent by next summer, as bigger carriers pull back and competition from rival Southwest heats up. JetBlue... plans to offer up to 78 daily flights from Boston to 33 destinations. That includes two more flights to Chicago and Raleigh Durham, N.C., for a total of three daily flights each. JetBlue will also add flights from Boston to San Francisco, San Diego, Washington and spots in the Caribbean. JetBlue currently serves more cities out of Boston than any other airline.

Both JetBlue and Southwest finished October in relatively good health. So it's not our place to accuse either of recklessness, nor do we have access to the numbers they have. But it sure looks like this little rivalry is beginning to get out of hand.

[Photo: vnvlain / Flickr]

Related Stories:
· JetBlue to increase Boston flights by 30 percent [AP]
· JetBlue Coverage [Jaunted]
· BOS Coverage [Jaunted]

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