JetAmerica said Friday it was suspending sales, would immediately begin notifying customers and processing refunds. The carrier expects to refund more than $900,000 for flights from Aug. 14 through the end of September, JetAmerica spokesman Bryan Glazer said.
JetAmerica said all customers are to receive refunds within 14 days. Anyone not receiving a full refund should call 727-451-3970. The company also operates a Web site at www.jetamerica.com.
JetAmerica had already postponed its flight startup date from July 13 to Aug. 14, planning to offer flights from Toledo, Ohio; Lansing, Mich., Melbourne, Fla., South Bend, Ind., and Minneapolis to Newark, N.J. The company said it had been surprised by a federal requirement that it had to obtain takeoff and landing time slots at Newark Liberty International Airport, and then concluded that it could not afford to buy those slots.
Aviation consultant Michael Boyd, president of Boyd Group Inc. in Evergreen, Colo., said JetAmerica was an ill-conceived venture that offered too few flights to have been successful.
Weikle said he inherited route schedules planned by JetAmerica’s owner, privately held Sun America, of Clearwater, Fla., and had tried to make the plan work.
Weikle, 59, founded the ill-fated Skybus low-fare airline in 2007. Skybus failed within a year, piling up costs and struggling with high fuel prices. Weikle said he had left Skybus 10 months before it failed.
Weikle also tried to start up HeartLand Airlines years ago to serve Dayton business travelers, but left in 2000 in a disagreement about who should run that company. HeartLand never started operations and dissolved in 2001.
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