Eastern Airlines is the most unusual real airline in the United States. There’s a lot I don’t understand about Eastern, but nothing is more confusing to me than how the airline keeps putting new flights on sale, and then backtracks.
Continue reading: Eastern Airlines’ Strange Habit Of Canceling New Routes
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Seems most likely that Eastern is playing like Frontier and throwing darts on a map and seeing what sticks and cancelling what doesn’t get sufficient loads. I’m sure they’re subsidizing this practice with their charter business and hoping they can get their scheduled operations in the black.
Constantly canceling new routes sounds like a particularly bad business
model. How are you supposed to trust a company that does that?
@ Chris -- What I find so strange is that in many cases Eastern isn't even waiting long enough to see what sticks. Canceling a flight a few days after it goes on sale doesn't exactly give people a chance to buy tickets.
Sounds very incompetent, very shady, or both. So there’s either no strategy or it’s an underhanded one.
It Sounds to me that everything is transactional with Eastern. A loyalty program might be, a really far out dream with the number of aircrafts they posses.
I think it's pretty clear. It's a money laundering operation, just like mattress firm.
It will go on out of business eventually, but not before cleaning millions.
@ Mickey -- I can't personally confirm anything with 100% certainty, but the flight isn't on sale, so that's what it seems like to me.
In some cases, like NYC-SJD and NYC-ANC, it seems like they identified an under-served route, started to offer it, and then the majors noticed and jumped in and added a bunch of service and so Eastern bailed? If that's the case, it does seem like a challenging business model as long as the majors continue to have a fair amount of spare aircraft capacity.
My guess is that it is a front used for money laundering. They could put new routes for sale to give a legitimate reason for a client located elsewhere to transfer large amount of cash in or out of US.
My guess is that Easterns destinations have resulted in poor ticket sales therefore having to cancel the routes. They may not have the funds to keep that route for a while to see it ticket sales would improve? Former Flight Attendant here.
They may just be banking your money and earning a couple months' interest before refunding it. Could also be laundering money!
@Bgriff I agree. Especially with the ANC/JFK one, because ever since Delta announced the same route, Eastern stopped selling tickets.
They might be afraid of loosing or have not promoted themselves properly to be known
If the fares they are “selling” during these short booking windows are on the high side (I don’t know personally), then you can probably bank on it being a front for money laundering. It is an interesting airlines in that they actually have flying aircraft, unlike the other gems you mentioned previously. But something is definitely shady about it.
This airline launch Boston to Brazil (Direct Fly To CNF) so it was an amazing news… so I booked back in may/2021 to go see my family in September/2021… walk in to Logan airport and a big surprise… not seen no one from this company to contact… no one knew about Eastern Airlines…. Big frustration then…my 10hr direct flight
got canceled without Notice… no phone call, no text message, no email and no nothing!! I don’t know how long ago! It was too good to be true… so annoying… luggages, the hassle, the lack of service… sorry!! But never again!
absurd what they are doing, they canceled my flight from Boston/Belo Horizonte, but it seems that they are keeping flight 114/Boston/Belo Horizonte, why did they cancel my flight? I feel discriminated against, and alone, we have nowhere to look for help, then I bought another New York/Belo Horizonte flight that was also cancelled. How long will they keep doing this is no one going to do anything for us customers?