Airline Profile: JetBlue
The Facts:
| Founded | 1999 |
| Alliance | N/A |
| Focus Cities | Boston Logan Fort Lauderdale New York-JFK (largest) Los Angeles Orlando San Juan |
| Headquarters | New York |
| Frequent Flyer Program | TrueBlue |
| Skytrax Rating | 3 (out of 5) |
| Travel Classes | Economy Even More Space (extra legroom economy) JetBlue Mint |
| Fleet Count | Around 268 |
| Website | JetBlue.com |
Analysis:
4 Things To Know About JetBlue
Fleet
JetBlue, operating mostly within the US and North America, operates a fleet solely consisting of narrow-body aircraft. Additionally, they primarily operate Airbus A320 series aircraft, which consists of 130 Airbus A320 aircraft (the first aircraft they ever operated, which they are also in the process of retrofitting). They also operate a significant fleet of nearly 80 Airbus A321s, of which 12 are A321neos and 34 of which are in their special Mint configuration, which is equipped with business class and is used on some transcontinental and Caribbean flights (more on that later in this article). In addition, they actually have 26 A321LRs and A321XLRs (13 of each type) on order, both of which are actually A321neos with longer range (though the XLR has a longer range than the LR), which they will use primarily for transatlantic flights.
JetBlue also operates 60 Embraer E190s which will be retired by 2025 (though they may be retired earlier due to COVID) which generally are used on shorter flights along the East Cost. As a replacement for their aging E190s, they have 70 Airbus A220-300s on order which they should start taking delivery of this year, though they do represent a capacity (and range) upgrade, with 140 seats instead of 100, along with a range of 3,350nmi instead of 2,450nmi, so it’s likely that they’ll be used on “long and thin” routes (longer, generally transcontinental flights with less demand).
Route Network
Much like Southwest, JetBlue doesn’t operate hubs per se, a key feature of being a low-cost airline (though they technically are a hybrid airline, as in ways they resemble low-cost airlines and in other ways they resemble full service network carriers), where most of the traffic at that one airport connects through to fly to a third destination. Rather, they mostly fly point-to-point flights with an emphasis in connecting markets that have demand, mostly out of airports called focus cities which resemble hubs, though where they don’t actually connect very many few people through (that doesn’t mean that connections don’t exist because they do, it’s just not as emphasized as it is at hubs such as United’s is at Denver, or Delta’s is in Atlanta). JetBlue has a few focus cities, of which the largest is New York JFK Airport, with smaller focus cities in Boston, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, and San Juan.
JetBlue’s primarily operates flights up and down the East Coast of the US, largely connecting larger cities in the northeast to Florida and the Caribbean. However, they have (relatively, meaning within the last 5-10 years) recently increased their transcontinental services, which is evident through their increasing premium Mint flights that compete with United, American, and Delta (which is one way that they actually are more like a network carrier than a low-cost carrier) more than with Southwest and Spirit, like they largely do with their Florida network. JetBlue also has a couple of flights to Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru in South America out of Fort Lauderdale and New York, and they additionally will soon begin transatlantic flights (much more on that in the next section).
Transatlantic Flights
It has long been evident that JetBlue has wanted to operate transatlantic flights, with London its primary target destination, in which they hope to disrupt the premium market the way they disrupted the premium market from New York and Boston to San Francisco and Los Angeles with their Mint product. JetBlue has never had a plane with the range to fly transatlantic flights, at least not with ease, though this will change when they take delivery of their first A321LRs early next year.
They announced their intentions to fly transatlantically in 2019, though only very recently have they actually acquired slots to London, including 14 weekly slots to Gatwick and 28 to Stansted. Obviously, Stansted and Gatwick are not ideal, as both airports are more for leisure travelers and are far out from London (meaning that they probably won’t disrupt the business market as they were hoping to do); they were hoping (and applied for) Heathrow slots, of which they received none, so Stansted and Gatwick were their sort of backup plans. While one might think that in a pandemic, you should be able to acquire slots at Heathrow easily, this was actually not the case, as Heathrow has applied a temporary rule in which airlines can keep their slots without actually needing to use them, which they normally have in place.
JetBlue indeed plans to operate flights to London next year (yes, even with a pandemic), with plans to start flights from New York to Gatwick and Boston to Stansted in early 2021. JetBlue will likely keep trying to acquire Heathrow slots, though I don’t think that it’s likely they will for another couple years. While Gatwick has plenty of transatlantic flights, Stansted currently doesn’t, though Primera Air (briefly) operated flights from Stansted to North America in 2018 before it went out of business, and before that La Compagnie and MaxJet operated flights to North America. Additionally, a couple of airlines do (normally) operate long-haul flights out of Stansted, including Emirates and Air India.
JetBlue additionally has stated that they will introduce a new Mint product with all aisle access (more on that later) for their A321LRs and A321XLRs specifically for their transatlantic flights. It’s likely that JetBlue will also eventually operate flights to other destinations in Europe, though they haven’t given any hints as to where they will fly to. The A321LR has a range of 4,000nmi while the A321XLR has a range of 5,000nmi, so they could fly to nearly everywhere in Europe from New York and Boston. While this is just pure speculation, if they were to launch more long-haul flights to Europe (which they will probably do within the next two or three years), my best guesses would be Paris and Dublin, while I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually were to serve Lisbon, Madrid, Amsterdam, Reykjavik, Manchester, Edinburgh, along with potentially other destinations in the British Isles.
Frequent Flyer Program
JetBlue’s frequent flyer program is called TrueBlue; while in comparison to other low-cost or hybrid airlines, their program is quite good, though in comparison to airlines such as United or American, their program isn’t as comprehensive. TrueBlue, like most programs nowadays, is a revenue based program, which means that you earn miles based on the amount of money you spend. On each flight, you earn 3 miles per dollar spent, along with 3-5 additional points depending on what class you fly. In terms of redeeming miles, JetBlue’s fares aren’t fixed, meaning that they have a dynamic award chart and basically just charge whatever they want for a ticket, being roughly proportional to what the ticket actually costs. The minimum award cost for JetBlue flights is 3,500 miles, though they’ll only ever be that low for short domestic flights on non-popular dates, while transcontinental flights generally start at 11,000 miles or so per flight. While JetBlue has many partner airlines (such as Emirates), unfortunately, the only partner airline that you can redeem miles on is Hawaiian Airlines.
JetBlue has one elite status tier, Mosaic Status, which has benefits such as a 15,000 point qualification when you reach it, three bonus points per flight, free flight changes and cancellations, two free checked bags, priority check-in, priority boarding, along with a couple other benefits. To earn Mosaic Status, you have to either fly 30 segments and earn 12,000 miles within a year, or fly 15,000 miles in a year, which seems to be pretty reasonable.
Travel Classes
Economy Class
Economy Class is in a 2-2 configuration on all E190s, a 3-3 configuration onboard all A320 series aircraft, and will be in a 2-3 configuration onboard their A220 aircraft. JetBlue has among the best in-flight entertainment out of all US airlines only rivaled by Delta, with personal entertainment screens with free movies, DIRECTV (36+ channels on A320, E190, 100+ channels on A321 and retrofitted A320s), and Sirius XM Radio equipped on all aircraft. Even JetBlue’s smaller E190s offer personal screens playing free entertainment, compared to most other US airlines which mostly only offer personal device entertainment on many of their regional flights.
However, beware, their entertainment screens are not as modern on their E190s and non-retrofitted A320s (though I believe most are or are being retrofitted now), with only live TV and looping movies. JetBlue also offers free wifi on all aircraft, a cool feature that very few airlines have. JetBlue also offers free snacks on all flights along with snack boxes and warm meals on flights longer than two hours, similarly to United, American, and Delta on domestic flights. Additionally, JetBlue offers pillows and blankets, along with small amenity kits for purchase on longer flights, something which most US mainline carriers don’t offer on domestic flights. Like all US legacy carriers, JetBlue offers an extra legroom section of economy class, with around 3-5 inches of extra legroom; passengers also get access to early boarding and access to a fast lane at security checkpoints.
JetBlue Mint
JetBlue historically hasn’t offered a premium cabin product (they still operate with a single cabin class on the vast majority of their flights), though in 2014, they introduced a premium cabin to compete with United, Delta, and American on key transcontinental routes, the first of which were Boston and New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco. To compete and attempt to disrupt the premium transcontinental market, JetBlue Started Mint class, roughly comparable (actually it’s better) to the premium transcontinental products of the “Big Three” airlines. On all Mint configured Airbus A321s, JetBlue features 16 flat bed seats in Mint class, using the Thompson Vantage business class seat, which had previously only been featured on wide-body jets on airlines such as Swiss and Delta.
Prior to Mint, very few narrow-body had lie-flat seats, with the only example that I can think of being United’s and Delta’s internationally configured 757-200s, though they used the Collins Diamond seat. Since the introduction of Mint, many other airlines have introduced the Thompson Vantage product on narrow-body aircraft, including TAP, Air Astana, and Aer Lingus on the A321 and FlyDubai on the 737. The seats are in an alternating configuration between 2-2 and 1-1 configuration, though what makes Mint unique is that seats in rows with a 1-1 configuration (4 seats in total) feature fully closed suites with closing doors. JetBlue was the first airline to introduce business class with closing doors; no further airline would go on to introduce that feature until 2017 when Qatar Airways introduced their QSuites, though a plethora of airlines have introduced closing suites in business since then (including Delta, British Airways, China Eastern, Aeroflot, and ANA).
Surprisingly, no other airlines have introduced closing doors with the Thompson Vantage except for Delta on its A330neo (fun nerdy paxex fact, while their A350s use the Thompson Vantage XL, they actually use a version of the Thompson Vantage on their A330neos for Delta One Suites). Anyways, I know I’ve gotten off topic, but if possible, unless traveling with a companion you want to sit next to, you should always select the suites in a 1-1 configuration, as they offer a lot more privacy than the seats in a 2-2 configuration. I have attached the seat guru seat map of the JetBlue Mint Section for clarification. JetBlue Mint seats are also equipped with personal entertainment screens at every seat.
JetBlue also recently (literally a few days ago) introduced a new soft product across the board. Firstly, JetBlue has historically and is continuing to serve tapas-style meals in Mint, meaning that you can choose three of five small meal choices that range from salads to small warm meals. The unique meal style is one of the things that makes JetBlue Mint so unique and beloved, which is why they’re continuing it, though with the recent changes, they just updated the menu and silverware. With their new changes, they introduced new bedding, which includes a memory foam pillow, a new duvet, and snooze kits with ear plugs and eye masks. JetBlue also introduced new amenity kits with different amenity kits for Caribbean flights, morning flights, afternoon flights, and red-eye flights.
The one downside to JetBlue Mint is that unlike United, Delta, or American, it does not come with lounge access. While it’s true that the “Big Three” don’t grant lounge access to domestic first class passengers, they do offer it to passengers on their premium transcontinental flights, which is what JetBlue is competing against. There hasn’t been any word of JetBlue introducing lounges in the future; while I wouldn’t be surprised if they were to introduce them, I’m not holding my breath.
While JetBlue initially only operated Mint configured aircraft on a few select transcontinental flights, they have added services to quite a few other destinations. JetBlue offers the most comprehensive premium service, operating to 17 destinations. This includes three airports in the northeast (JFK, Boston, and recently Newark to compete with United), six airports on the west coast (LAX, Palm Springs, Seattle, San Diego, Las Vegas, and San Francisco), two airports in Florida (West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale), along with six in the Caribbean and Central America (St. Maarten, Aruba, Grenada, Liberia, St. Lucia, and Barbados). A full route map for Mint is attached below.
Finally, JetBlue has said that they would introduce a new business class product on their A321LRs and A321XLRs, which they will primarily use for their London flights. The airline has said that its new Mint product will feature all aisle access, which would make them the first airline to have all aisle access in business class on a narrow-body jet. My guess is that it would be a herringbone or reverse-herringbone seat, and it’s quite possible (if not likely) that they would feature closing doors. Two likely seats seem to be the STELIA OPERA seat and the Thompson Vantage Solo, both of which are designed for narrow-body aircraft.
Have you ever flown on JetBlue Airways? Share about your experience below in the comments section!
