Originally posted by VS045After touting up the JFK CH, I wonder if that would be a serious option. They'd have to put one in at EWR. The cost of dumping one/constructing another would be significant.
If a move to EWR is done, I hope VS takes the noise/privacy complaints to heart and drops the open plan.
Also, there is a CH at EWR already.
VS.
BTW, I do love the staff at EWR and the VS018.
Yeah, I should never post on multiple forums on limited sleep.
EWR has a CH (but you would think I didn't remember that [:I]). My bad. Perhaps I should have stated: if VS intend on carrying more capacity out of EWR by dropping JFK, they'll need to expand EWR's CH and put in a BIGGER one. I don't see that happening, what with the cost of such a rebuild and the construction cost of JFK ending up as an expensive writeoff. I really can't see VS selling it to another carrier lock, stock, and barrel, can you?
Right now both CH see pax loads all year; dropping one altogether would mean lesser service IMHO unless the lounge remaining was enlarged/revised. If EWR is revised, the open plan is not a winner with many (or at least travelers I have spoken with).
JFK has a *few* competing carriers, so they are getting a bonus out of touting privacy in their lounges. Newark has a few, also; if service in the CH slows down due to the sheer number of pax, that will be a selling point for the other carriers as well. 'Come to OUR lounge! Come here, get more room, more service, and blah blah' will be their mantra.
I'd rather not see that happen. If the choices are JFK and EWR, or JFK alone, or EWR alone, I have to go with EWR alone, with one caveat: expand the CH. Or keep things as they are. I may not prefer the open plan (and I don't like JFK as a whole for multiple reasons; unless I MUST connect there, I never go there), but I'd rather be in JFK's CH than sit in two airports' worth of people at EWR and be glad my flight's been called. Glad to hear my flight's boarding while at a CH? [:?] (shudder)
JFK alone? Let's not even mention that seriously, shall we? I jokingly call it AWP, for Avoid Whenever Possible...
