March 18, 2012

Offbeat idea

I spoke with Shaun Sutner this week from the Telegram, who did a story today on the future of ORH.   In it he has quote from me

William Randell, a city businessman and blogger who has followed the airport closely over the years in his “Worcester Blog,” has his own offbeat idea for attracting a blue-chip airline.  n“There has to be some way JetBlue can set it up to allow people in Worcester to deposit cash in to their Travel Bank to show them how badly we want service,” he posted on his blog recently. “Imagine if we could raise $1,000,000 bucks by people depositing cash in their True Blue Account, it would help entice JetBlue to come to ORH (the airport’s FAA name).”   The airline’s Travel Bank is part of a frequent flier program that allows customers to use credits to pay for flights.

Am not sure why it is offbeat?   JetBlue flies 100 flights per day out of Boston, an airport owned by the same company that owns MassPort.   How do we convince JetBlue to divert one flight per day  to ORH or should I say JetBlue Airport?  Seriously 1 flight out of 100 per day to Florida?  
  1. JetBlue has a program TrueBlue 
  2. You earn points with each mile you fly but you also earn points other ways like when you buy things from partners they specify
  3. earn points with your AmEx card
  4. It is a great program.  Not vouchers or membership but kind of like your credit card where you earn points.
  5. You can also outright put cash into your TrueBlue Account
  6. My idea would be to pick a day or a week and urge people from Worcester to cash into their accounts that they would use to fly out of ORH.   Personally I would put $2,000 in since we would use it anyhow over the next year or two flying JetBlue out of Boston.   
On JetBlue's end I know they would be able to track this?  I am open to a better "offbeat" idea.     

Next Spring FlyJetBlue out of JetBlue airport to JetBlue
 park to see the Rex Sox

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Access Road." Repeat after me "Access Road." Until that is addressed, ORH is a corn field in Iowa. Build it (an access road) and they will come.

Bill Randell said...

we all know an access road is the end game. Best case scenario that will take 10-15 years. That is best case.

Anonymous in the meantime we do nothing?? People will find a corn field if we have the right flights.

Direct Air, a god awful airline, proves that.

Anonymous said...

Best thing about the whole Direct Air ordeal was when they first came to ORH they were leasing aircraft from Virgin America ... Worcester had top shelf shit!!!! Then eventually as Direct Air started to decline they couldn't afford the Virgin America aircraft any longer and we were getting 30 year old planes, instead.... at least I got to see my 'vision' of VA at ORH ... now time to get someone else in there...

Harry T
Worcester,MA

Jahn said...

Bill , after Worcesterites are burned by DA on their "deposits" arent people going to be gun shy about again paying up front for another comm. air carrier, even if it is req'd by law to be escrowed until the service is actually used. Once Burned..........

Also let us not forget , Massport has had full control of Worc airport for 21 months and they 9 years to slide down the learning curve at Worc Airport and frankly they have done nothing as re getting add'l comm. air service.

Shouldnt the likes Of CC Germaine & Co. be directing their anger at MASSPORT for being an utter failure at delivering anything except for newly paved runaways.

Once again the Worc New Building (runaway in this case) Syndrome comes home to roost. This is a DSM IV issue that shrinks that say goes something like this. We cant teach our school kids, we cant get shoppers downtown, and we cant get airplanes at the airport..............so we'll build the kiddies a new school or we'll raze the downtown mall and replace it w/office towers exsiting mall or we'll build a new terminal (1996?) and re pave some runways and all the peple will come.....not quite!!!!!

And now the 16 yr old terminal already needs a new furnace and a new roof?

Here's a thought I have mentioned before. Massport is only good at running local monopolies (Logan) and it's run by a bunch of hacks with little to no real competitive business experience. SO after 21 months Worc airport is still a ghost town. Plus the city gave the dam place away, apparently with no performance criteria re what Massport would do with the airport.

jan said...

In business what does it tell you if the teh contractor you hire has all rented equipment? Fwiw, A lease is merely renting. Well to me red flags would go up everywhere telling me that my contractor cannt afford to buy ANY equipment and therefore has 'financial Issues".

Of course if you're Worc Airport and the likes of DA (a.k.a. Rent-A-Plane) is the only potential carrier looking to come to Worc Airport..........what choice do you have....If you're ORH ya gotta hook up with what ya can get if you're an ugly duckling airport?

Anonymous said...

Bill - why don't you consider launching a direct appeal to jetblue?

jose said...

i agree with jahn. im sure jetblue would like to fly 1 plane out of worcester a day, but im sure massport wont let them cause all those people who live close enough to orh will fly out there and not pay masspike tolls, tolls to get in and out of boston, tolls to get out of logan parking lot. massport is losing enough as it is cause of orh and would probably lose more if they let jetblue fly some planes out of orh. what orh needs is someone who isnt flying out of logan.