Jaunted

Airfare Wars / FLL / Virgin America / JetBlue / Inaugural Flights / New Routes / Fort Lauderdale Travel / Florida Travel / → All Tags

Fort Lauderdale Airport Is The New Bunker Hill

When the Colonials learned that British forces were planning to send troops out of the city to the surrounding unoccupied hills, they acted. The colonials set up shop at the top of Bunker & Breed's Hill and picked off the redcoats sending them retreating towards Cambridge. Seems to us that FLL is the new Bunker Hill, though we will leave it to you to determine which airline wears what uniform.

By now we all know how Virgin America launched their 10th destination earlier this week at FLL and we have the photo gallery to prove it. However, what really struck us about our jaunt to meet them in FLL was the obvious jockeying for position that was going on there between JetBlue and Virgin America.

The feud deepens, after the jump.

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Airfare Wars / Southwest / JetBlue / Boston / BOS / Airline News / LCCs / → All Tags

JetBlue Retaliates To Southwest's Latest Boston Escalation

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.

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Airfare Wars / Southwest / JetBlue / Boston / BOS / AirTran / BWI / Airline News / LCCs / → All Tags

Southwest Intensifies Boston Turf War With JetBlue And AirTran

The outlook for the 2010 airline industry is unremittingly bleak, but you wouldn't know it from the way that Southwest is acting. The low cost carrier is adding 104 flights to its spring schedule. In the process they're turning the Boston turf war they started with JetBlue and AirTran into a full-blown bloodbath:

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Booking Sites / Airfare Wars / Orbitz / Travel News / → All Tags

Orbitz Joins the Great Airfare Booking Fee Drop of '09

Forget a battle of the airfare wars; the desperation to pack people on planes has reached new lows with even the airfare booking sites coming to blows. In order to scrounge up the business of people still traveling, sites like Expedia/Hotwire and Travelocity began dropping their booking fees in March, with Orbitz/CheapTickets late to the table this week. While these fees are typically under $10 per ticket and barely perceptible when you're dropping some dough on first class or multi-segment, the elimination of them seems a genuinely altruistic thing to do in this economy.

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Down Under War / Virgin Australia / Delta Airlines / Qantas / Airfare Wars / Travel News / → All Tags

Delta and Virgin Australia Make Love While Qantas Watches Wistfully

The Down Under War of the Airlines continues. This morning Virgin Australia and Delta Airlines have announced an interline partnership that will enable travelers to "travel on a single ticket on the two airlines between Australia and the US." What we think this means (and correct us if we're wrong) is that you can fly Virgin from Oz to Los Angeles and then hop on a Delta flight from LA to anywhere else in the US. You get one ticket and your luggage is checked all the way through to your final destination.

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