What is up with this flight with JetBlue?

[son3disfan]

I know it is just a guess, but I am worried about my flight being cancelled. I don't understand what JetBlue is doing....thought maybe someone here might know.

I booked our flight for March when JetBlue first released them.
Paid $139 one way for the non stop flight. There are 2 non-stop flights for the day we booked. We have to have the one we booked -pm - as we we work that day. So, if they cancel our flight , the am flight will not work at all. All of the pm connecting flights ( if our flight gets cancelled) arrive in to Mco at 12 am or later with really long stop overs.....not going to work for us. The next day will not work either as we are going on a cruise and the flights will be so close to our departure time.

Immediately after booking, the price went up to $459 ( one way). Crazy expensive.
The price has dropped a bit to around $389 or so, but that's it. So here's the issue...
THE FLIGHT IS EMPTY!
There are only about 9 seats that have been selected. Our flight home is almost booked solid.
I am worried they might cancel our flight. Why wouldn't they drop the price to fill the plane?
Is this how JetBlue works? Offer 2 nonstops and take one away?
Other Fridays seem to only offer one nonstop a day from our airport.....
This is during the Canadian Spring break, and all flights for this time are expensive.
What is your experience with this....

 

[DebbieB]

I know it is just a guess, but I am worried about my flight being cancelled. I don't understand what JetBlue is doing....thought maybe someone here might know.

I booked our flight for March when JetBlue first released them.
Paid $139 one way for the non stop flight. There are 2 non-stop flights for the day we booked. We have to have the one we booked -pm - as we we work that day. So, if they cancel our flight , the am flight will not work at all. All of the pm connecting flights ( if our flight gets cancelled) arrive in to Mco at 12 am or later with really long stop overs.....not going to work for us. The next day will not work either as we are going on a cruise and the flights will be so close to our departure time.

Immediately after booking, the price went up to $459 ( one way). Crazy expensive.
The price has dropped a bit to around $389 or so, but that's it. So here's the issue...
THE FLIGHT IS EMPTY!
There are only about 9 seats that have been selected. Our flight home is almost booked solid.
I am worried they might cancel our flight. Why wouldn't they drop the price to fill the plane?
Is this how JetBlue works? Offer 2 nonstops and take one away?
Other Fridays seem to only offer one nonstop a day from our airport.....
This is during the Canadian Spring break, and all flights for this time are expensive.
What is your experience with this....

There's still 4 months. They are hoping people will book, especially business people who book closer to the date, that's why the price is high. It will probably come down. They typically don't cancel 1 flight because it's not full. That plane is coming into your city with people, so they will need to fly it back out.

 

[MAH4546]

You have no way of knowing the flight's load factors. Seating charts do not indicate ticket sales.

 

[son3disfan]

You have no way of knowing the flight's load factors. Seating charts do not indicate ticket sales.

Maybe with other airlines this is true...when you pay for a seat and want to wait for check in to get a free one.
But You do not pay for seats on JetBlue. When you pick your flight and pay the next page is to pick your seats....for free.
Why someone wouldn't pick them..... Maybe. A few.
But like I said the plane is empty.

 

[son3disfan]

There's still 4 months. They are hoping people will book, especially business people who book closer to the date, that's why the price is high. It will probably come down. They typically don't cancel 1 flight because it's not full. That plane is coming into your city with people, so they will need to fly it back out.

I was thinking that too. We don't fly that often, and have had really bad luck in the past with AirTran cancelling our nonstops after booking ....usually two or three months before our travel date. ( this is from the Buffalo airport).
We are not that familiar with JetBlue and hoped we would have better luck.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[MAH4546]

Maybe with other airlines this is true...when you pay for a seat and want to wait for check in to get a free one.
But You do not pay for seats on JetBlue. When you pick your flight and pay the next page is to pick your seats....for free.
Why someone wouldn't pick them..... Maybe. A few.
But like I said the plane is empty.

Group travel rates, passengers interlining through other carriers and passengers booked through third parties are just some examples of people often with unassigned seats.

With every airline it's true: seat maps do not indicate the load factor of a flight. Some airlines also intentional block and unblock seats on maps because they don't want advance load data leaking to competitors.

 

[son3disfan]

Group travel rates, passengers interlining through other carriers and passengers booked through third parties are just some examples of people often with unassigned seats.

With every airline it's true: seat maps do not indicate the load factor of a flight. Some airlines also intentional block and unblock seats on maps because they don't want advance load data leaking to competitors.

Good to know. Thanks for the info.

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Hey there son3disfan,

I have no idea as to the answer to your original post....I don't fly often and am clueless as to how these things work . But I thought I'd share our current experience with JetBlue, in case it helps any.

We are booked to fly from Syracuse to MCO on Dec. 31, returning on Jan. 7 (first time flying with this carrier). We booked our tickets the first week of August. Our original flight time home was set to depart at 8:12 a.m.

In early October, we received a notice saying they had changed our departure flight time to 7:40 a.m. We initially hesitated to book the 8:12 flight because we feared it was too early (assuming we would be exhausted after a week of vacationing) but the price was far better than the flights later in the day. So you can imagine how dismayed we were to hear that now we were leaving even earlier . But what do you do? We sucked it up and tried to look on the brightside......we would be driving home from Syracuse in daylight.

Within a month, we got a second notice of a change to our departure flight, this time to 2:50 p.m. They have eliminated the morning flights ENTIRELY. While this makes us totally happy (except that it fouled up our car rental....doh! ) it would definitely be a problem for those who needed to be home before nighttime. And there's no other option for that date, except for an even later flight......so those who need to be home earlier are sunk.

All that said, its quite possible that your flights will change in some manner before your departure.......hopefully to your advantage, but I guess you never know.

 

[son3disfan]

Thanks Gina, that is my worry.

 

[kaytieeldr]

Keep in mind, there's a difference between a schedule change (or changes), like what happened to Gina, and a single flight cancellation. The latter is highly unlikely because, as indicated above, that plane needs to be in your destination city to take scheduled passengers somewhere else. It might not be profitable for an aiine to fly a partly/mostly empty plane between two points, but it's less so to not fly it at all.

I flew from LAS to BOS on a red-eye Christmas night a few years ago. The plane was only 1/3 full, but it had to be in Boston in the morning to get passengers somewhere else. Anybody who wanted had their own three seat section. There are advantages to being short .