Let’s Go To Newark!

“Why,” I hear some of you asking, “Would we want to go to Newark?” Well, probably you wouldn’t want to, unless you were going to catch an airplane from there to somewhere else, or perhaps continue on into New York, which is just the other side of the river. And even if you were, you’d be more likely to fly into one of the two New York airports (Kennedy or La Guardia) and take a cab from there – unless you live in a small town in Mid-Michigan, from which you can’t get a direct flight to anywhere in the New York City area without first flying to Chicago or Detroit. Until now, that is…

I was most interested to note that the latest iteration of the ultra-cheap no-frills airline that charges extra for absolutely everything except the actual seats is going to be connecting Lansing, Michigan with Newark’s Liberty Airport. Jet America is going to be operating what is actually a public charter service, not an airline, connecting Lansing and two other underserved Midwest cities with Newark and also to Melbourne/Vero Beach, Florida. According to the USA Today article referenced above, most of the flights will be around $69 until the price of jet gas rises again, but there will also be a certain number of promotional fares at just $9 available when the carrier has unsold seats available. Which is probably less than the cab ride to or from the airport is going to cost you…

Readers who were with us for the discussions of loss-leader offers over the past few years will recognize these $9 fares as a similar concept; it doesn’t matter if the airline makes nothing (or even loses money) on those tickets, provided that it gets new customers familiar with their service and convinces them to come back and purchase real tickets at some later date. A much more disturbing issue is that we’ve seen this particular loss-leader program before – last year, when Skybus Charter, out of Columbus, Ohio, was offering $10 promotional tickets until the high price of jet fuel put them out of business in April 2008. It wouldn’t be much of a worry, except the price of regular unleaded gasoline has risen $1.20 in the past four months – and the entrepreneur behind Jet America is the same guy who founded Skybus in 2007…

So anyone from Lansing – or Toledo, South Bend or Melbourne/Vero Beach, for that matter – who wants to take advantage of rare low prices and ever rarer direct service to Newark would be well-advised to cash in on this offer quickly, before the company folds or the airplane they’re using (it’s a single chartered 737 as of this posting) starts to develop mechanical issues. If enough people do, the carrier might even survive long enough to honor your tickets and give you the chance to visit moderately distant places on a reasonable budget before they ship a defective oxygen generator, fail to de-ice the wings, employ chatty flight crew with insufficient flight experience on a hazardous route, or simply discover that the old line about insanity being defined as doing the same thing and expecting a different result is more sad than funny, but is still quite true…

Meanwhile, I’m going to look into investing in bus companies…