JetBlue is pulling completely out of seven cities and trimming 24 routes as it refocuses service in the Northeast. Is the future of JetBlue just a regional airline?
JetBlue Ends Service To 7 Cities
Determined to return to profitability, JetBlue is cutting service altogether to seven cities including some it has seved for nearly 20 years:
- Charlotte (CLT)
- Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP)
- San Antonio (SAT)
- Hollywood-Burbank (BUR)
- Tallahassee (TLH)
- Palm Springs (PSP)
- Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe (PTP)
Maybe the Guadeloupe route cut makes sense due to tepid demand, but how can JetBlue expect to cut its way to growth? How can it build loyalty by eliminating service to major cities like Charlotte or Minneapolis?
I’m not a professional route planner and the key with aircraft utilization is not necessarily what is profitable and what is non-profitable, but what represents the best use of an aircraft. Even so, these route cuts are surprising.
Route Cuts
Route cutes include:
- Los Angeles (LAX) – Nassau, Bahamas (NAS) – ends September 7, 2024
- Boston (BOS) – Charlotte (CLT) – October 26, 2024
- Boston (BOS) – Minneapolis (MSP) – October 26, 2024
- Boston (BOS) – San Antonio (SAT) – October 26, 2024
- Newark (EWR) – Montego Bay, Jamaica (MBJ) – October 26, 2024
- Los Angeles (LAX) – Los Cabos, Mexico (SJD) – October 26, 2024
- Los Angeles (LAX) – Salt Lake City (SLC) – October 26, 2024
- New York (JFK) – Burbank (BUR) – October 26, 2024
- Raleigh-Durham (RDU) – Cancun, Mexico (CUN) – October 26, 2024
- Raleigh-Durham (RDU) – Orlando (MCO) – October 26, 2024
- Fort Lauderdale (FLL) – Tallahassee (TLH) – October 27, 2024
- Newark (EWR) – Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (SDQ) – January 6, 2025
- Fort Lauderdale (FLL) – Guayaquil, Ecuador (GYE) – January 6, 2025
- Fort Lauderdale (FLL) – San Diego (SAN) – January 6, 2025
- New York (JFK) – Palm Springs (PSP) – will not resume this winter
- New York (JFK) – Palm Springs (PSP) – will not resume this winter
- New York (JFK) – Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe (PTP) – will not resume this winter
Route Suspensions
Furthermore, JetBlue will suspend the following routes:
- Boston (BOS) – Amsterdam (AMS)
- ends October 26, 2024
- resumes March 29, 2025
- Boston (BOS) – Milwaukee (MKE)
- ends October 26, 2024
- resumes April 30, 2025
- Boston (BOS) – Salt Lake City (SLC)
- ends October 27, 2024
- resumes June 12, 2025
- will operate during “peak winter periods”
- Buffalo (BUF) – Los Angeles (LAX)
- ends October 27, 2024
- resumes April 29, 2025
- will operate during “peak winter periods”
- New York (JFK) – Austin (AUS)
- ends October 27, 2024
- resumes April 30, 2025
- New York (JFK) – Seattle (SEA)
- ends October 27, 2024
- resumes April 30, 2025
It must be sobering that JetBlue has not been able to make a route like JFK-SEA work.
JetBlue Adds Northeast Routes
JetBlue plans to redeploy some of those aircraft to new routes focusing on travel between the Northeast and Florida. In addition to service from its hub in Boston, it will add service from nearby Providence, Rhode Island and Manchester, New Hamshire.
|
To/From: |
City: |
Frequency: |
Begins: |
|
Presque Isle, ME (PQI) |
Boston (BOS) |
1x daily, year-round |
9/5/2024 |
|
Providence, RI (PVD) |
Fort Myers (RSW) |
1x daily, winter seasonal |
10/27/2024 |
|
Providence, RI (PVD) |
Tampa (TPA) |
1x daily, winter seasonal |
10/27/2024 |
|
Providence, RI (PVD) |
San Juan, PR (SJU) |
1x daily, year-round |
10/28/2024 |
|
Portland, ME (PWM) |
Orlando (MCO) |
3x weekly, winter seasonal |
10/28/2024 |
|
Manchester, NH (MHT) |
Orlando (MCO) |
1x daily, year-round |
1/23/2025 |
|
Manchester, NH (MHT) |
Fort Myers (RSW) |
3x weekly, winter seasonal |
1/23/2025 |
|
Manchester, NH (MHT) |
Fort Lauderdale (FLL) |
4x weekly, winter seasonal |
1/24/2025 |
JetBlue will also add Mint (business class) service between Boston and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX).
Playing The Long Game For An Alaska Airlines Merger?
I’m just speculating–perhaps hoping–but a JetBlue – Alaska Airlines merger still seems plausible to me in a few years. If JetBlue continues to develop its presence in the East, where Alaska is weakest, while Alaska continues to build up in the West, I see a merger possibility with a largely non-overlapping route network.
JetBlue and Alaska are not exactly siblings in terms of in-flight products, but I think there are synergies and potentially even a way for the two to become a better rival to the US legacy carriers.
CONCLUSION
JetBlue has announced its latest round of route cuts, including the total elimination of service to seven cities. Instead, JetBlue will focus more on the Northeast and Florida. As JetBlue searches for profitability, it is finding less routes outside its East Coast concentration.
image: JetBlue at Burbank (BUR)
Sad to see them exit BUR. And year round service from LAX is now limited to just JFK, BOS and FLL- quite a change from just a year ago.
I’ve always wanted to take their redeye to JFK, never got around to it. Maybe that’s why they are pulling out. Did they serve any other destination out of BUR?
The termination of the BUR service means that JetBlue is now useless to me, sorry to say.
As soon as I burn my remaining points, I’ll be finished with them.
Eliyahu, I feel the exact same way. It’s actually easier for me to fly United into LAX. My dear friend who lives near Burbank who is 82 will be affected by this though. Burbank is easier for him to get to and negotiate than LAX 🙁
So JetBlue is increasingly focused on Florida and Puerto Rico routes. All beach/leisure, highly seasonal, with tons of capacity and a lot of low yield. It is shrinking its operations further. Not a good sign. While American Airlines is not performing well, it stands to gain the most for the inevitable end of JetBlue as an independent airline and when that happens, look for AA and UA to divide up the spoils at JFK, BOS, and for United in particular, in Florida.
OK, living in the midwest (but often flying elsewhere), my longstanding issue with JetBlue is that they are too concentrated in the Noo Yawk and Boston markets. Well, their answer to this critique seems to be “ok, lets double down on Noo Yawk and trim elsewhere”. Cutting significant and growing markets from the system is stupid. That’s right, I said stupid. Because it is. The fewer options that you give travelers, the more likely they are to book elsewhere. This is part of what’s been happening at BOS; they’ve been trimming, DL smelled blood and the tide has shifted heavily. This is not a recipe for success.
It’s sad, because I’ve flown JetBlue (MKE-BOS) in this case) and my flights were fantastic, It was a very positive experience until I arrived at Logan Airport at 9 pm on a weeknight. Then it was hell, bus that’s a different story and not JetBlue’s fault. Still what are they thinking? Being the official airline of one market? A market that you’ll never serve thoroughly enough to be number 1 in?
At least AS is a regional airline and does a great job of that. They are super strong in the far west and have critican mass to make it. But JetBlue isn’t even regionjal. They are JFK and FLL (to a much lesser extent). You can’t make a living that way.
Blame Joe and the Ho for their hatred of capitalism. JetBlue had multiple plans ruined by their dreams of everyone having the same assets and income, except them of course.
And the cackling c#cksucker will only be worse if blacks and women vote against their own self interests.
The judge who ruled in favor of the US Government was a Reagan appointee, so kinda hard to see how his ruling was a hatred of capitalism. I think the judge got it wrong in terms of long-term competition and viability, but to say the decision was anti-capitalist is just wrong.
Uncle Joe and Kamala’s executive branch challenged the AA B6 agreement
Wow, you’re obscene. There’s a way to express your opinion without the misogyny and 6th grade insults. You definitely have made me reconsider my vote.
LOL….sounds like you’re suggesting people of color and women should vote for the racist convicted felon sex offender, who believes that women should not have control over their own bodies. Good luck with that.
Your childish misogyny and racism show what a shallow, weak, cowardly person you really are. And in November you will see once again that people like yourself are in the minority.
@Dave is right. B6 had a great chance to grow …destroyed by communistic ideals. Prayers that this administration goes bye-bye.
Or perhaps they were destroyed by capitalism and poor management? That is they grew too fast, wasted resources on European flights, wasted time and resources on mergers that were absurd and clearly going to raise eyebrows, became notorious for canceled and delayed flights systemwide – alienating many of its loyal flyers, and finally formed a disjointed route network that relied on people choosing them over powerhouses like Delta in Boston and JFK?
We can only hope and pray that they GO AWAY!,,,,,..!!Let only informed voters VOTE!
Informed by whom? Russian propaganda machines parading as ‘news’ channels? Grow up.
Now that you have read the propaganda from the fan of the convicted criminal running to become President again, let’s provide some facts for comparative evaluation:
that the current President’s Administration has brought unemployment way, way down from what it inherited on Inauguration Day in 2021;
that the stock market has set new record highs under the current Administration;
that the US economy is the envy of the world and outperformed all the other G7 countries under the current Administration; and
that the growth in government debt as a proportion of our economy has been slower under this Administration than under the prior Administration run by the repeatedly bankruptcy-filing billionaire con-man known as “The Donald”.
Fan-boys for mergers and accusations and higher tariffs are what drive up inflation in America — and that’s what that clown Trump Administration gave us on his way out the door last time and will give us again if he’s allowed back into the White House instead of being flagged as a persona non grata for both his criminal ways and gross incompetence before.
The problem is these ‘people’ only want to believe their ‘alternative facts’. The do not want to live in reality. They want to continue living in the 1950’s America that never existed. They are too immature and weak to actually live in the real world. What sad, shallow lives they live.
Having worked for both B6 and AS, there are work cultures that frequent travelers might not be aware of. B6 airport crew, for example is not unuionized and they want to keep it that way…one of the first orientation meetings at B6 was one where they offered the “Unions do nothing for you” sppeeches, and anti-union information campaigns are permanent fixtures in break rooms. Furthet, my experience at B6 was miserable, with one management figures stated that we as airport ops needed to do more to increase loads on our flights…which is not the responsibility of front line employees. In contrast, AS does have a unionized airport crew, but I also see that management appears to be more concerned about its employees than I ever saw at B6. Morale is much higher at AS, job secuirity is better.
Why wouls AS buy a cash- bleeding, retracting airline that has absolute zero fleet commonality? Let Neelman buy it back and merge it into Breeze.
Another Midwesterner here who has experienced Jetblue a couple of times and my experiences have been… mixed. Summary: anything that involves being on the plane, Jetblue is above average. Anything that does not involve being on the plane, Jetblue is below average.
See: extreme schedule changes, where I was offered alternative flights arriving 6 to 23 hours later than before. Not being able to change your flight on the app or the website and having to deal with a several-hour-long wait on the phone/IM chatroom in the middle of the night. The most restrictive and convoluted system for their “flight credits” when COVID hit in 2020. A change in the pricing structure for the flights so that one wasn’t able to buy a ticket that included baggage fees. Not being able to earn AA miles anymore because of the discontinuation of the NE Alliance.
Jetblue was fine for a short period of time. Then they steadily got worse and worse. I’m still a bit disappointed that they will be leaving my home airport but I’d be hesitant to give them another chance or pony up the cash to fly Mint.
I’m going to miss the MSP service, but JetBlue’s game has been so weak in the way you indicated that I have used it less out of MSP than I was hoping to do so when they first launched service to/from MSP (in 2017?). And between MSP being such a big Delta and Suncountry town, JetBlue had an uphill struggle from the start at MSP —- especially with much of the rest of the traffic eventually grabbed by Southwest, Frontier and even American in terms of city pairs on offer from MSP. JetBlue’s failing at MSP is in part because the airline has never truly gotten out of its point-to-point service mentality as much as it could. JetBlue has had this super JFK route network that they should have been able to milk better with feed to and from it for onward connections, but for various reasons it just seems to never get there very well and then IRROPs recovery is just too often too messy with them.
It makes financial sense for Jetblue to cull single daily routes like LAX-SLC, RDU-MCO, EWR-SDQ, where incumbent carriers offer multiple flights daily. Cutting business-travellers heavy routes such as JFK-SEA and JFK-AUS indicated that JBLU is losing corporate contracts to Delta.
@Matt
You listed “New York (JFK) – Palm Springs (PSP) – will not resume this winter” twice in the route cut list.
Also, you have the sub-header as “Route cutes include…”
Anyway, B6 has been abandoning MSY for some time, down to just BOS and JFK.
I will try to cash in my TrueBlue points ASAP and avoid the Chapter 11 chaos.
In its current state, B6 should be labeled “Eastern Airlines 2.0”.
Retreating back to the East Coast and the Caribbean, abandoning the midwest, minimal footprint at LAX, slashing routes, hemorrhaging cash, etc. The only thing of value will be the slots and a few jets.