If you think US politics was the only thing crazy the last week, let’s jump into something equally volatile – aviation news in Florida.

First the good news – as first reported here earlier in the year, Avelo has FINALLY opened it’s Lakeland base! Hooray!

In addition to the current service from Lakeland to New Haven, Avelo begins new service this fall from Lakeland to Atlanta, Concord (NC), Hartford/Springfield, Manchester NH, Rochester NY, San Juan and Wilmington DE. The planes and crews for this service will come from recent cuts between Orlando and several secondary cities including Binghamton, Charlottesville and Wassau WI.

Now the bad news…

JetBlue is in full blown crisis contraction mode. Not only is shrinking to profitability something that generally doesn’t work in the industry but by cutting significant connecting flows at Boston, New York-JFK and Fort Lauderdale, JetBlue is now rpaidly just becoming a boutique point-to-point carrier with major route network holes and an unreliable reputation in terms of being on-time.

In terms of Florida, JetBlue will close Tallahassee completely as a destination after just a few months of service. The daily A320-200 service to Fort Lauderdale that generally flew more than half empty has been cancelled. Fort Lauderdale will also lose nonstop service to Guayaquil leaving Medellin as the last South American nonstop destination from FLL – where JetBlue once served six cities on that continent nonstop. JetBlue will also exit Fort Lauderdale-San Diego nonstops after nearly a decade leaving Alaska as the only airline on that route.

Service from Miami to Hartford/Springfield and Orlando to Raleigh/Durham have also been cut but new nonstops from Orlando to Portland (ME), West Palm Beach to Buffalo and Orlando, Fort Lauderdale & Fort Myers to Manchester NH have been added.

We’re not listing the numerous cuts from Boston and New York JFK that mirror JetBlue’s earlier-in-the- year cuts from Fort Lauderdale, but the net result is all three cities where the airline operated what we’d call hubs have been downgraded to what we’d now call focus cities. The airline has shrunk that much.

Southwest cuts

Southwest is an operation mess, an airline in crisis that now has an activist investor in Elliot finance partly calling the shots (I covered Elliot’s then takeover of football club AC Milan for Sport Business magazine in 2018 and can tell you they do not invest in companies because they are impressed with the management so expect more changes). As a result Southwest is dispensing with open seating, a trademark of the company since its 1971 founding. It’s also cutting the following routes that touch Florida:

• El Paso-Orlando
• Chicago (ORD)- Orlando
• Miami-New Orleans
• Fort Lauderdale-Montego Bay

The airline will begin seasonal service between West Palm Beach and Providence.

Frontier cuts

Frontier’s dartboard getting several darts pulled. Here are the Florida cuts:

• Cleveland-Jacksonville
• Columbus OH-Orlando
• Cancun-Miami
• Cancun-Tampa
• Dallas/Fort Worth-Fort Myers
• Orlando-Knoxville
• Orlando-Memphis
• Orlando-Milwaukee
• Orlando-Madison
• Orlando-Minneapolis/St Paul
• Orlando- Pittsburgh
• Orlando-St Croix
• Orlando- St Thomas
• Philadelphia-Pensacola

Also of note, American will cut Tampa-Los Angeles and Orlando-Austin in the fall. Don’t be surprised if American is the next airline to make major cuts or juggle its network. They like JetBlue and Southwest are really struggling.