[hookem]

Hey all,

I flew JetBlue out of ABIA to Florida over the holiday, along their new FLL-AUS-SFO route. I've always had good experiences with JetBlue, and they were great this trip, just as expected.

The good news is the passenger load both ways was pretty full. On 7/3, a pretty busy travel day, the 100-seat E190 had maybe 2 seats open. On the way back, 7/5 (slower day) there were probably 6 seats open.

I didn't really note how many passengers were from SFO when I took the AUS-FLL route... but on the way back, I noticed there were many who were going all the way to SFO. In fact, the gate at FLL didn't even say Austin, it just said San Francisco... I'd estimate 40-50% at least of the plane was going on to SFO.

The disappointing thing was, when we got to Austin lots of the people going on to SFO wanted to get off the plane for food/drink/bathroom. The people in front of us asked the flight attendant how long they had before the flight started boarding again -- they were told they had 10 minutes. So, as I'm walking toward escalators to leave the airport, I'm seeing these connecting passengers running up to the bars & restaurants, only to find them CLOSED or CLOSING at 6pm! On a Saturday! They were frantically trying to find something open, and I'm not sure if they did. The retail was closed too. Need a tylenol? Want a book to read? Sorry, you'll have to wait 3 more hours til you are in SFO. It was disgusting, to think these people's only exposure to Austin was that they couldn't buy a beer or sandwich at 6pm at our airport.

For shame, ABIA. Not ready for little hub status, IMO... probably will get some complaints from the JetBlue passengers... heck, after what I saw, I wouldn't want to connect here.