Pittsburgh Tribune-Review “Signs Of Life” Article Linky
Apparently the residents of Pittsburgh have short-term memory loss.
When I went to high school there, tickets to NYC(or to anywhere for that matter) were monopolized by USAirways, who controlled some 95% of all PIT flights back then.
Understandably tickets were prohibitively expensive, in the $200 range for advance purchase tickets for the sub-1 hour hop to NYC(forget about if you didnt buy it 14 days in advance with a Saturday night stay).
Along came Airtran in 2001 to take on big bad USAir and offered $98 RT fares, which of course USAir matched.
By this point everyone forgot about Pre-Airtran prices and flew with USAir.
Airtran brought the RT price all the way down $58 before calling it quits the same year the service started. They cited lack of support from the Pittsburgh community for their flights. (Airtran would go on to shift their NYC flights to, and start a mini-hub in Akron, OH, driving down fares in Cleveland as a result…)
Of course once Airtran ended PIT-NYC service prices to NYC went up overnight.
Luckily for Pittsburgh, in 2006 Jetblue bought regional jets and decided that Pittsburgh was once again ready for NYC flights.
Unfortunately the same cycle is happening again, with Jetblue introducing flights at $98 RT before dropping them to $58 RT (Or even $24 RT for Ctown readers)
Speaking about Pittsburghers a Jetblue spokesman said, “JetBlue’s four daily flights to New York and two to Boston have many empty seats…They continue to fly US (Airways), but now they fly at the $59 fare vs. the $199 they charged before we entered the market”
-Why won’t Pittsburghers fly with the airline causing the low fares?
-Is Pittsburgh just not capable of supporting an LCC?
-Pittsburgh Ctownreaders-Support your LCC carriers: Use them or lose them(Believe me CLE will more than happy to have Jetblue)!
