{"id":234378,"date":"2025-05-10T09:17:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T09:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/airline\/delta-and-korean-look-west-contour-is-in-good-spirits-cranky-flier\/"},"modified":"2025-05-10T09:17:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T09:17:06","slug":"delta-and-korean-look-west-contour-is-in-good-spirits-cranky-flier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=234378","title":{"rendered":"Delta and Korean Look West, Contour is in Good Spirits \u2013 Cranky Flier"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Delta, Korean Acquire 25% of WestJet<\/h3>\n

Delta Air Lines and Korean Air are teaming up to purchase 25%<\/a> of SkyTeam\u2019s best direct source of poutine, maple syrup, and hockey \u2014 WestJet. Delta will acquire 15% of the carrier at the cost of $330 million and a year\u2019s supply of Biscoff, while Korean will purchase 10%, for $220 million, and it must provide a commitment that it will do everything in its power to destroy WestJet\u2019s hated arch-rival Korean LCC Eastar Jet..<\/p>\n

As part of the deal, Delta also retains the right to flip 2.3% of WestJet to its JV partner Air France-KLM in exchange for $50 million and a player to be named later. The agreement comes about five years after Delta\u2019s proposed JV with WestJet was nixed. DL puts most of its focus on its JV and equity partners, leading to the potential that it will increase collaboration with WestJet on transborder travel if it can get federal approval this time. WestJet already flies to four Canadian cities from Atlanta \u2014 Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Winnipeg \u2014 none of which are served by DL from its Atlanta hub.<\/p>\n

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Spirit Partners with Contour<\/h3>\n

Spirit joining forces with Contour sounds like an airline madlib gone wrong, but it\u2019s a real thing. The yellow-planed, fee-loving, ULCC carrier will form a strategic partnership<\/a> with Contour Airlines. Contour is the second biggest EAS carrier in the country, currently with service to 22 EAS cities. It flies a grand total of zero yellow airplanes. For now.<\/p>\n

Contour has been around for just shy of a decade, and it currently operates just over 2,000 flights a month on 26 airplanes, all of which are configured with 30 seats. Despite this new partnership with Spirit, Contour will continue to interline with American, United, and Alaska provided they pay Contour\u2019s recently added interline fee that it totally came up with on its own.<\/p>\n

The routes the two will partner on have not yet been announced, but Spirit says it plans to introduce service to its existing leisure markets to many of Contour\u2019s EAS destinations. When asked if it would introduce new fees on EAS routes Contour president Ben Munson declined comment except to say that it would not rule out a backwater fee for any customer that lives in an EAS market and chooses to fly on his airline. <\/p>\n

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JetBlue Seeks New Ventures<\/h3>\n

Nearly a decade after founding JetBlue Ventures, the carrier is spinning its subsidiary off<\/a>, with SKY Leasing, an aviation investment manager acquiring the property.<\/p>\n

JetBlue Ventures was created to invest in startups across tech and transportation. It invested in 55 early-stage startups and made over 40 follow-on investments which led to eight exits via acquisitions and public offerings. It was also claims credit for such innovations as \u201cputting a hub in Boston,\u201d and \u201cMint.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spun-off asset will maintain its current brand as part of a licensing agreement with JetBlue. By divesting itself of this potential distraction, it\u2019s expected that the carrier and its CEO Joanna Geraghty will be able to maintain a laser focus on turning the airline back to a consistently profitable one. Early ideas thrown around included some sort of collaboration with some airline in the northeast of the country and scrapping expensive Jet-A fuel and flying its planes on Dunkin\u2019 coffee instead.<\/p>\n

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Breeze Blows Into Fort Lauderdale and Salisbury<\/h3>\n

Breeze Airways is adding two new cities<\/a> and 21 new routes to its map, as the carrier will start service in both Fort Lauderdale (otherwise known as the Salisbury of south Florida) and Salisbury, Md.<\/p>\n

Salisbury (SBY) located on the Delmarva Peninsula and with close access to Ocean City (MD), will see 2x weekly flights to Orlando on Breeze beginning Oct. 1. The airport is currently served by hometown carrier Piedmont Airlines flying on behalf of American Eagle to both Charlotte and Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

As for Fort Lauderdale, several elected official both in the city and throghout Broward County have remarked recently that what the city is really missing is more service to Akron, as Allegiant\u2019s sub-daily service just wasn\u2019t cutting it. Enter Breeze. Flights from FLL to both Akron and Wilmington (NC) will begin in November.<\/p>\n

The 21 new routes includes additions to Akron and Wilmington, with CAK adding six destinations and ILM getting five. NW Arkansas is adding the rest, including seven in Florida and other places that we\u2019re sure have overwhelming desire for increased service to Arkansas.<\/p>\n

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Avelo Stretches Seating Options<\/h3>\n

Avelo Airlines announced two new seating options<\/a> \u2014 Stretch and Stretch+ \u2014 for customers, with the new options becoming available for flights as of September 3.<\/p>\n

The airline won\u2019t have to reconfigure any planes \u2014 it\u2019s taking its current configuration and putting a fresh coat of marketing paint on it. Anything to distract us from its new book of business flying from Arizona to Central America, we suppose. It\u2019s as if Avelo\u2019s senior leadership sat around the last week and concluded they had to come up with something \u2014 literally anything \u2014 to change the most recent story when its name came up, so it decided to take its already existing seating and give it new names. Brilliant.<\/p>\n

What is happening? It\u2019s taking its pre-existing extra legroom seats (consisting of about one-third of the seats on each plane) and giving it a fancy name. (And by \u201cfancy,\u201d we mean a name even Frontier decided wasn\u2019t worth keeping.) The first couple rows will also come with a blocked middle seat \u2014 hence the \u201c+\u201d in Stretch+. The remaining rows of extra legroom seating will be part of the \u201cStretch\u201d category. The existence of a Stretch+ implies that Stretch- must also exist, right? Or is that just for its Sierra Vista to San Salvador shuttle service?<\/p>\n

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