American ups the ante in NYC
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American ups the ante in NYC
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SCOTT JAGOW: Okay, let’s play coincidence or no? This morning American Airlines announced a slate of flights out of New York’s JFK. Now, JetBlue has a quarter of all the departures at JFK. And of course, JetBlue is hurting from stranding all those people during last week’s snowstorm. More now from Alisa Roth.
ALISA ROTH: American Airlines is adding a raft of new flights between New York and cities like Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Raleigh-Durham.
Ray Neidl is an airline analyst at Calyon Securities. He says the new routes will help American entice business travelers, who are the lifeblood of the airline industry.
RAY NEIDL: New York is a huge gateway, it’s got a huge, local traveling public population. But you would want to supplement that with as much feed that you could get into JFK as possible and that’s why they’re adding these new routes.
American is jockeying to keep up with Delta, Continental and JetBlue. All of which have big chunks of the Big Apple’s air traffic.
Today’s announcement from American does come at a rough time for upstart competitor JetBlue. But Neidl says it’s nothing personal.
NEIDL: It’s strictly a coincidence. You can’t move that quickly.
And he says most of the new routes are really more competition for Delta and Continental.
In New York, I’m Alisa Roth for Marketplace.
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