In a seismic reshuffle that hints at JetBlue’s international ambitions, JetBlue will leave Long Beach Airport and base Southern California operations at LAX.
JetBlue Will Add LAX Base
Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is one of JetBlue’s “most successful and profitable” markets. Prior to COVID-19, it had sought to grow at LAX, but had been unable to obtain the necessary gates. But the pandemic created an opportunity and JetBlue has secured additional gates. It will also move its Flight, Inflight, and Tech Ops bases to LAX. Now JetBlue plan to triple its number of flights from LAX by 2025 including adding international service:
Today we offer about 20 flights per day at LAX and have plans to grow to about 70 flights per day by 2025.
In the meantime, JetBlue will add 10-12 additional flights per day and start serve to the following cities:
- Austin (AUS)
- Bozeman (BZN)
- Las Vegas (LAS)
- Reno (RNO)
- Seattle (SEA)
- Salt Lake City (SLC)
- San Francisco (SFO)
All of these routes come from Long Beach (LGB).
This aggressive moves challenges a host of carriers, including Southwest Airlines. Coupled with its coast-to-coast service to Newark and JFK in New York City, Boston, Buffalo, Ft. Lauderdlae, and Orlando, JetBlue hopes to build a stronger hub to better compete on the West Coast.
Why Is JetBlue Leaving Long Beach?
JetBlue can trace its origins back to Long Beach (LGB), but the airport has been a constant source of tension for JetBlue. As JetBlue explained it:
This move presents a path for us to be a greater player on the West Coast, without the limitations imposed at Long Beach Airport, which include a nightly curfew, slot limits, and no international arrivals capabilities. For many years, we faced stiff resistance to international growth, which we believed would have helped turn around the station’s financial underperformance. In light of the deep impact of coronavirus and the long road to recovery, we can no longer sustain these losses, especially when such a promising opportunity for our company’s future has opened up at LAX.
JetBlue’s last day of operations in Long Beach is planned for October 7th. Service to Portland, Oregon will not transition to LAX, while other routes will.
LGB-based crewmembers will be transferred to the LAX and ground staff will be offered priority to move to LAX or other JetBlue stations.
CONCLUSION
A note to employees from CEO Robin Hayes best sums up the situation:
Today’s news is bittersweet as we plan to say farewell to an airport and a community that’s been part of our company’s story from our earliest days while also recognizing this move is the right one for our future as we prepare for our next decade of growth.
With so much red tape at LGB and opportunity at LAX, the move makes a lot of sense. I’m a bit surprised that JetBlue will not maintain a couple flights, like it does in Burbank (BUR), but perhaps it is not worth the effort and also a warning to other airports that burdensome restrictions will result in the loss of air service.
Are you excited about JetBlue’s expansion at LAX?
Where will they get the gates for 70 flights? Assume they would need 8-10 gates. I don’t believe that kind of space is available in T5 – unless AA are planning to give the airport back gates with their drawdown.
My guess is T5 but could be a reshuffle of T6?
LAX is not slot restricted. Maybe you mean gates.
Yes, gates. Thanks Nino.
What we really need is a lounge.
Yes, a MINT Lounge would be a tremendous value-add.
What’s the red tape at LGB? Could you dive into that a bit more? Seems so counterproductive/intuitive for a small airport that presumably wants to stick around to have such onerous policies such that an airline up and moves its SoCal base. Personally, I’m an SNA fan, but good luck getting a non-WN flight outta there.
See block quote above. B6 faced neighborhood opposition, space constraints, curfews, and a failed international arrivals facility.
Jeez! So much for my reading comprehension today. Thanks for keeping me alert.
LGB is nice but the location is not too helpful other than Torrance and RPV. Still, I have used LGB maybe twice and liked it.
Alaska Airlines wasted money on Jet America. It closed up shop at LGB.
What are their international ambitions (or pretensions)?
I suspect Latin America, not Europe, but that was not specified.
LAX is a horrible airport. Part of the appeal of JetBlue was that it’s flights departed from a clean and uncrowded airport with helpful staff. The design of the new terminal is award winning and frequently listed as one of the more pleasant airport facilities. The City of Long Beach was not helpful by denying international service to JetBlue because of pressure from the wheel-healed NIMBYS that surround the airport. Please note: the airport has been in it’s location for 95 years but the faux ‘haciendas’ and ‘Mediterranean’ McMansions are a much more recent addition. It’s a sad goodbye for me to JetBlue since I avoid LAX about as much as I do the current plague.
Thanks for your comment. I agree that LGB is a beautiful little airport and that the unreasonable NIMBY folks really ruined it for everyone. I hope Southwest now grows at Long Beach with an incentive package that will ditch curfews.
Wish they’d add some service to SNA, specially to NYC. United’s flight to EWR is always full and more expansive than LAX
This is another coup for Los Angeles World Airports. They managed to kill off Ontario Airport after acquiring it. LAWA would love nothing more than to see LGB go under – as would the McMansion dwellers surround it – so as to consolidate to essentially three airports: John Wayne, Burbank and LAX. Truth is that when the U.S. Marine Corps left Tustin and El Toro Marine Corps Air Stations it would have made better sense to put a commercial airport in south Orange County. LGB and SNA are too close.
However, when the two Marine Corps bases were turned over to the corrupt local government they sold off much of the land to – drum roll – McMansion developers – and these homes on the former military installations have been bought by mainly mainland Communist Chinese party officials! You just cannot make this stuff up – because it isn’t. Look up, please, who bought the housing at the former U.S. Army Presidio in San Franciso back in the 90s by the Golden Gate Bridge. Yep, mainland Chinese Communists. Wealthy Communists, of course. Most were corrupt officials who managed to move their cash to the U.S. along with their families. So much for the future of America.
Meaning? Meaning Long Beach has the option to shut down LGB and profit from the sale of land for luxury housing.
Wonder if Hawaiian will resume the LGB service in the future still going forward
Overall, this move makes a lot of sense. The LA Basin is a huge market and one that you need to be a player in if you have any aspirations to be a national airline. While the move is not free of potential problems (i.e. LAX is already very competitive), it is logical in many ways. Not the least of which is how AA seems to be pulling back there. And, if B6 wants to diversify it’s mostly BOS and JFK-based customer base, there’s no better place to start.
It is a real shame that B6 couldn’t have hung on to a couple of routes out of LGB – at least a JFK Mint route. It’s such an easy and low stress airport to deal with, versus the traffic issues at LAX. And they’re still going to be at BUR.
But, then again, B6 has made a name for itself being based at JFK which makes LAX look like a delight.
I’m a big fan of the smaller secondary airports in major markets (like LGB, BUR, ONT, and SNA in LA; ISP in New York; OAK and SJC in the Bay Area, etc). That said, I always found it a bit curious that JetBlue had staked out LGB as its west coast base – I know that it’s difficult to carve out gate space at LAX, but those secondary airports don’t tend to make great bases because people from outside of the area won’t be as familiar with them when looking for flights into the area. That’s probably a marketing problem that could be solved, like with Southwest’s website that suggests alternative area airports when you type the code in for one of them. So ultimately, given JetBlue’s goals and that dynamic (on top of the political issues they faced with LGB), the move over to LAX makes a lot of sense.
Oh well, hopefully some other airlines will add additional frequencies to their hubs to compete with Southwest and make LGB a more realistic option for people looking to avoid the mess that is LAX.
did Southwest add the feature to finally allow all LA Basin airports to all Bay Area airports in one single search click ?
maybe something has changed, but my past experience (might’ve been a while) was that even though in the drop down they show other ones near by, searches are still on airport-pair basis. Is that still the case ?
I’m typically quite airport agnostic of a person, so the site/app isn’t overly customer friendly in that regard (within reasonable limits – e.g. LGA-EWR-JFK agnostic but not treating ISP/SWF/TTN as meaningful subs for the trio other than the most urgent scenarios)