They'd love to fly...

March 11, 2005 8:11 AM

Like misbehaving teenagers, Jetsgo passengers find themselves grounded indefinitely. As it turns out you can't both operate on razor-thin margins AND spend millions upon millions in expensive marketing campaigns. Who'd have thunk it?
posted by clevershark (23 comments total)

I know several prople grounded now because of this. Lesson to airlines: Maybe 2-for-1 deals should be reserved for tennis shoes and cheeseburgers.
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:18 AM on March 11, 2005

er... people, not prople.
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:18 AM on March 11, 2005

Well, I'm certainly glad my mother didn't buy those tickets on Jetsgo for October.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:20 AM on March 11, 2005

I had looked into them too--they had great deals from NY up there. (Altho i'm sure AirCanada creating that Tango or whatever it is hurt them too)
posted by amberglow at 8:43 AM on March 11, 2005

Canada 3000, Jetsgo, who's next?
posted by kika at 8:47 AM on March 11, 2005

It's a shame I never actually tried that airline. I know that in my last year in the US I was quite keen on trying to avoid Air Canada (because, you know, my time is valuable), but it was my only option between EWR and YUL... it's my understanding that Jetsgo only started flying to US locations at the beginning of the year.
posted by clevershark at 9:10 AM on March 11, 2005

There's always WestJet, whose agents were inspiring confidence by sitting on the desk and blowing soap bubbles at the gate when I flew from Hamilton.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 9:26 AM on March 11, 2005

Oh, and kika, according to the article, Jetsgo was created from the still-warm remains of Canada 3000, so it's more like the same company dying twice.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 9:27 AM on March 11, 2005

That's a drag. Their flights from NYC were convenient and cheap.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 9:36 AM on March 11, 2005

JetsGo lost my sister's luggage for three days between Toronto and Halifax, a direct flight. Never had good flight options either. Still...it was good to have more competition. At least I didn't get burned this time. I had a ticket for Canada 3000 when they went under, never got the money back. As a university student, let me tell you how much that blew.
posted by livii at 10:56 AM on March 11, 2005

as it turns out you can't both operate razor-thin margins and spend millions upon millions in expensive marketing campaigns.

I recently had a pretty unpleasant experience flying the Jetsgo-like Independence Air - amateurish staff, and 2 flights that had their departure times changed 3 times
each (on the latter flight this decision was apparently made without informing the front office, since both the
website and their customer service reps continued to
report the original time hours after it was changed). The
whole thing just seemed cheap and doomed to fail, despite the marketing blitz.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:59 AM on March 11, 2005

Well, you get what you pay for.

I doubt though that Canada will ever have a stable and affordable airline industry. Its population density is just too low for the current business model to be viable. It's either a national carrier that's addicted to government subsidies and bailouts, or small startups that keep folding and reincarnating. Oh well, we might as well get used to it since air travel (and freight) as we know it will cease to exist when that whole peak oil scenario materializes. Yeah, yeah, chicken little and all that jazz...
posted by randomstriker at 1:35 PM on March 11, 2005

I doubt though that Canada will ever have a stable and affordable airline industry. Its population density is just too low for the current business model to be viable. It's either a national carrier that's addicted to government subsidies and bailouts, or small startups that keep folding and reincarnating.

Westjet turned a profit in every quarterly report from the fourth quarter 1996 until the fourth quarter 2004. And they did it with a no-frills, low fare business model. I'd say Canada has a stable and affordable airline industry right now.

Funny, in my local paper (the Edmonton Sun) page 3 had the news about Jetsgo going under and page 5 had a huge ad for a Jetsgo seat sale.
posted by heybate at 1:53 PM on March 11, 2005

The shutdown stranded 17,000 customers, many of whom were preparing to travel to Florida for spring break.
posted by WestCoaster at 3:03 PM on March 11, 2005

Westjet turned a profit in every quarterly report from the fourth quarter 1996 until the fourth quarter 2004. And they did it with a no-frills, low fare business model.

... Which gets to pick and choose its routes. The funniest part about the Air Canada thing is that they were almost always losing money at a faster rate than Canadian Airlines (the good guys), but they just had much deeper pockets, so they could keep going longer.
posted by Space Coyote at 4:44 PM on March 11, 2005

MSN Messenger conversation today between me and my little sister:

Lynn:
Is mom coming home on JetsGo?
Me:
I don't know, why?
Lynn:
Because I guess they shut down and all their flights are cancelled.
Me:
Oh, well then if she doesn't come home she's on JetsGo.
posted by Space Coyote at 4:50 PM on March 11, 2005

Westjet turned a profit in every quarterly report from the fourth quarter 1996 until the fourth quarter 2004. And they did it with a no-frills, low fare business model. I'd say Canada has a stable and affordable airline industry right now.

heybate, you could not legitimately call Westjet a "canadian" airline until recently. Western canadian, perhaps. With horrific (borderline illegal, in fact) labour practices to boot, fake cheer notwithstanding. And it's no secret that their financial reporting is massaged to the nth degree, with the 2004 Q4 loss attributed to a very necessary correction. Maybe Westjet will survive the industry shakeout, but certainly not by continuing to operate as it does now.
posted by randomstriker at 6:20 PM on March 11, 2005

You get what you pay for.

I used to think so, too. So I sometimes shilled out extra bucks to fly United. Now it seems they're going down the dumper as well.
posted by skeeter1 at 7:47 PM on March 11, 2005

There's always WestJet, whose agents were inspiring confidence by sitting on the desk and blowing soap bubbles at the gate when I flew from Hamilton.

Last time I flew JetsGo [Dec 2004], the gates changed three times in less than 30 minutes, and all the staff were running around like the world was ending. The flight previous to that [May 2004] the flight attendants continually managed to ram the corner of the food/beverage cart into the seat of the woman sitting one seat ahead of me, waking her up several times, amongst other things.

I'd rather be served by people who had a few spare minutes to blow bubbles, or who make dorky jokes like giving you a tea bag but no hot water when you ask for tea. I like stuff like that; travel stresses me out and seeing the staff having fun helps me chill out.
posted by AdamJ at 12:46 AM on March 12, 2005

True story.. one of my friends works for a Canadian credit card company, who the media has been saying passengers should contact.

She's not thrilled about this.. apparently you can't get a refund until after the flight hasn't left.

One guy however? He flew with them before they collapsed and wanted to get his money back for having to deal with such a shonky company...
posted by theducks at 4:15 AM on March 12, 2005

WestJet rules. I know of pilots who yearn to be employed by WestJet.

For starters, they trust their employees to do the right thing. That goes a long, long way in my books.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:14 AM on March 12, 2005

you could not legitimately call Westjet a "canadian" airline until recently. Western canadian, perhaps.

I wasn't aware my citizenship had been revoked. If an airline flies only Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, that would be Canadian, but not if it only flies Manitoba and west?
posted by evilcolonel at 3:08 PM on March 12, 2005

Turns out Jetsgo was the CEO/owner's fourth failed airline venture.

What a schmuck.

And it's worth noting that he isn't hurting from this debacle. The guy got multimillions out of each airline's failure. Meanwhile, the ticketholders, employees, and suppliers all get screwed to the wall.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:54 AM on March 13, 2005