‘Fung Wah’ Airlines

Negotiating the distance between the Hub of the Universe and the Big Apple was never easy. Harvard students who found themselves in a New York state of mind could choose between the cramped Fung Wah Bus and costly Amtrak service, neither of which was very inviting for undergrads desperate to escape the puritanical regime of 2 a.m. bar curfews. Thankfully, JetBlue Airways has come to the rescue with dramatically reduced airfare between Boston and New York: for a bit more than the Fung Wah fare, travelers can fly from Logan Airport to Kennedy Airport in just 70 short minutes.

Though this development is most welcome, it is also long overdue. Discount airliners have long offered equally cheap airfare between West Coast hubs such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. Other airliners have also offered discounted airfare between the northeast region’s smaller airports; Southwest Airlines, for example, sells one-way tickets from Hartford’s Bradley Airport to Baltimore-Washington International for as low as $45.

The main problem for the Boston-New York corridor has been the lack of any smaller airports (such as Hartford, Baltimore, or Providence) that do not charge airlines the exorbitant gate rental fees that Logan, JFK, and virtually all other major national hubs do. Although this fact has forced most discount airlines to limit their services to these smaller airports, JetBlue was able to acquire gates in Logan by drastically reducing internal operating costs. Massachusetts officials would be well-advised to continue encouraging discount airlines like JetBlue to use Logan as their Boston base in the northeast corridor. New York, after all, already represents the most popular destination from Logan, and there is an even larger potential market that will respond enthusiastically to the ability to travel quickly, reliably, and cheaply between the two cities.

For years, the federal government has tried to assist Amtrak’s bid to provide this travel need, but fares offered by the beleaguered passenger train service remain distressingly high. For travel times of over four hours, standard round-trip tickets between Boston and New York cost around $110, and for service via the crown jewel of the Amtrak network—namely, the “high-speed” Acela train—these prices rise to over $200 for trips that last only an hour less. JetBlue, on the other hand, offers round-trip tickets ranging from $50 to $150 for flights that last little more than one hour. JetBlue’s example illustrates Amtrak’s continuing failure in fulfilling the needs of today’s travelers, even after massive subsidization efforts on the part of the federal government.

Fortunately, such limitations of inadequate transportation options are now a thing of the past. Harvard students who “want to be a part of it,” take heart: JetBlue has finally enabled you to do so.