Flying to San Jose
Either Silicon Valley is declining in importance or New York City is or both. Used to be there were flights between the two every couple of hours. However, I just made my reservations to fly out for SD West and couldn’t get a direct flight out until 5:00 in the afternoon. There was one flight that left at 5:30 A.M., changed planes in Houston, and got there by noon. Otherwise, the earliest I could arrive was 5:00 in the afternoon.
Oh well, at least there’s still a direct red-eye home Friday night. (For a couple of years there wasn’t even that.)
February 7th, 2007 at 1:19 PM
I think what’s happening is that the airlines are taking the next step in their death spiral: every seat that flies empty is a direct loss, so they shrink the number of flights, so people find them inconvenient and find alternatives to flying. Next step: Washington.
February 7th, 2007 at 1:45 PM
American used to have a hub in San Jose, but they are winding it down and JetBlue and others haven’t yet picked up the slack for east coast flights. And there’s tough three-way competition here between San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland airports.
February 7th, 2007 at 2:58 PM
JetBlue used to have a morning flight to San Jose from Kennedy that I’ve been taking and enjoying for the last few years, but now they seem to have canceled that. Funny that they did that as American is winding down their hub. You’d think they’d want to pick up some of the slack.
I did consider flying to San Francisco instead, but if you’re going to San Jose/Santa Clara, SJC is a lot nicer. I’ll probably fly into to Oakland for JavaOne in May.
February 8th, 2007 at 10:37 AM
If you fly non-stop into SFO you can take a bus to the train station and take the train to San Jose. It adds some time to the trip but probably no more than changing planes would. And it’s a pleasant ride.
See http://www.bart.gov/guide/airport/sfo.asp
where it says “If you want to travel to San Jose or the South Bay, take a Millbrae-bound BART train from SFO to the Millbrae Station (a five-minute ride) and transfer there to CalTrain or connecting bus service for the trip south.”
The one thing I hate about SJC is that it’s really slow to get into and out of the airport, especially if you rent a car. They have the city-provided-rental-car-bus system which gives about 10 times poorer service than letting the rental car agencies do it themselves. And the traffic pattern around the airport is slow.