Within the six months since JetBlue introduced its new flights from Boston Logan Worldwide Airport (BOS) to Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport (MAD) and Edinburgh Airport (EDI) in Scotland, the airline and broader journey industries have been rocked by sudden modifications and pressures. Demand has shifted amid fears of a recession, and the airline has doubled down on its push for efficiency in its network, going so far as to cut new routes before they even launch.
Some speculated that JetBlue would pull again on its transatlantic ambitions after longtime CEO Robin Hayes retired in 2024, however the provider’s management is adamant that the other is definitely the case.
“The Transatlantic a part of our enterprise is definitely certainly one of our greatest strengths for the time being,” JetBlue’s chief monetary officer Ursula Hurley instructed TPG in Boston, simply earlier than the provider launched its first-ever service to Spain and its first Scotland service from Boston.
“The European franchise is essential,” Hurley added. “And we’re right here to remain.”
Doubling down on transatlantic
Beneath CEO Joanna Geraghty, who assumed her publish in early 2024, JetBlue started a concerted effort to enhance its operational efficiency and rein in prices by way of a number of ways.
That included realigning its network to deal with its core Northeast and East Coast markets, reducing locations that had been underperforming and pulling again on some earlier expansions — together with quite a few short-haul routes from Los Angeles.
In tightening up its community, JetBlue additionally cut some of its winter flying to Europe and redeployed the premium aircraft it makes use of on these routes, whereas pledging to be extra “opportunistic” in terms of the European market.
However even these strikes did not imply abandoning transatlantic.
Actually, Hurley stated, the brand new Boston flights are examples of how that opportunistic enlargement aligns with the airline’s present objectives: specializing in leisure journey out of the East Coast.
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“The European technique is absolutely about increasing buyer choices out of New York and Boston,” Hurley stated. “So Madrid, for instance, is a spot that prospects need to go to from a leisure perspective, and so we’re simply connecting the dots.”
Including Madrid to its listing of locations and launching service from Boston to Edinburgh — which observe’s final 12 months’s begin of flights to Scotland from New York Metropolis — are the newest examples of how JetBlue intends to pick and choose long, thin and lucrative routes that enchantment to leisure vacationers within the airline’s house markets.
Edinburgh, particularly, is an effective case. Journey demand to Scotland has grown notably lately. In 2023, Edinburgh surpassed pre-pandemic levels of holiday makers.
U.S. airways have steadily added nonstop service to match the demand, saving vacationers a cease in a European airline hub like London or Amsterdam. In 2025, passenger airways will function a complete of two,113 round-trip flights between the U.S. and Edinburgh, based on information from Cirium — up from 431 round-trips in 2012, when United launched service from Newark Liberty Worldwide Airport (EWR).
Actually, JetBlue shouldn’t be the one airline with an inaugural flight to the Scottish capital this week; American Airlines will launch its own service from Philadelphia Worldwide Airport on Friday, utilizing a wide-body plane — a Boeing 787-8.
JetBlue, in the meantime, operates the route with its long-range Airbus A321LR. It is a narrow-body that provides comparatively low working prices with a premium-heavy configuration that permits the airline to earn a strong revenue margin.
The jets are outfitted with 24 Mint enterprise class suites, 24 “EvenMore” extra-legroom seats and 90 “Core” economic system seats.
It is a comparatively small aircraft in comparison with what the legacy airways supply on transatlantic service, however that is precisely why it really works for JetBlue. The airline can promote leisure locations in Europe with out having to fill a bigger wide-body jet, permitting it to make the most of present demand the place it finds a strategic alternative.
2 inaugural flights on 1 evening
With inaugural flights to Madrid and Edinburgh leaving Boston inside an hour of one another on Thursday, the airport’s Terminal C was a cacophony of castanets and bagpipes. Themed snacks at each gates supplied vacationers a preflight deal with, and a few passengers famous with shock that they booked the flights for trip with no concept that there was something particular about them.
On board the flight to Edinburgh, JetBlue supplied its normal transatlantic product, which continues to shine as a robust competitor with a singular aptitude.
On board
Notable on the flight is the way in which JetBlue balances its top-tier gentle product, Mint, with the truth of what folks on board in all probability need: sleep. Each of the brand new flights from Boston go away late within the night, with the flight to Edinburgh scheduled for 10:29 p.m.
The airline nonetheless affords full transatlantic Mint meal service, a top-tier meal catered in partnership with restaurants from New York’s Scrumptious Hospitality Group.
However in acknowledgement of the late departure time, the airline affords a restricted choice with its “Savor and Sleep” idea — a single menu alternative with just a few dishes, served , reducing down on the time it will usually take flight attendants to combine and match varied meal choices, plate every part, and serve programs.
Whereas some may even see it as a cop-out to not supply a full menu, the truth is that many individuals select to eat earlier than the flight on these brief transatlantic hops between the Northeast and Europe — see Delta’s argument for constructing a sit-down restaurant in its enterprise class lounges.
All the things was scrumptious, whatever the choice or the plating — or the truth that, owing to a Nor’easter and a good bit of turbulence that stored the flight attendants seated for the primary hour, dinner was served after midnight on the inaugural.
After an abbreviated evening’s sleep, there was a breakfast providing of chia seed pudding, a biscuit, and a variety of coffees and teas. Not even six hours after departure, we had been on the bottom in Edinburgh, the place this reporter deliberate to log out and revel in an extended trip along with his household (who tagged alongside on this inaugural because of a stash of TrueBlue points in our family pool).
Some 24 minutes earlier, JetBlue flight 2261 had made its touchdown in Madrid, marking the airline’s first foray into Spain. It additionally marked the airline’s first transatlantic path to debut out of BOS quite than John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport (JFK), the place its 5 earlier European locations launched from.
Hurley steered that there is no subtext to learn into with that transfer:
“The place we see essentially the most fast alternative is out of Boston, simply in comparison with the competitors [to Madrid] that exists at present,” she defined. “We’re pointing airplanes to the locations the place we predict we are able to drive essentially the most profitability.”
Trying forward
Are these new routes right here to remain?
Actually, JetBlue’s latest community cuts present it is keen to make modifications if they do not carry out, as evidenced by the latest elimination of Boston service to Halifax, Nova Scotia, that will have launched subsequent month.
“With this management group, if issues aren’t working, they are going to get reduce,” Hurley stated, noting it “speaks to the actioning that this management group is keen to do to get to profitability.”
However Hurley argued that the corporate’s far-reaching “JetForward” plan to return JetBlue to profitability has the airline heading in the right direction.
That plan contains new airport lounges at JFK and BOS, which shall be accessible to transatlantic passengers flying within the provider’s Mint cabin.
“All these modifications are nonetheless maturing,” Hurley acknowledged. “However the headline is, we consider it is the suitable technique. We’ve got the proof factors to point out that it is working.”
Methods to e book JetBlue with factors and miles
Vacationers hoping to e book JetBlue’s new flights to Europe with factors and miles have just a few choices.
Past flying with JetBlue and incomes factors by spending on a cobranded bank card, you may switch rewards from a number of main issuers to the TrueBlue program. Some good TrueBlue switch companions embody:
The knowledge for the Citi Status Card has been collected independently by The Factors Man. The cardboard particulars on this web page haven’t been reviewed or supplied by the cardboard issuer.
Backside line
JetBlue’s European enterprise was a very long time within the making when it lastly launched in 2021, but it surely’s one which the airline insists has been profitable and is right here to remain. And if this utterly full Thursday evening flight to Edinburgh was any indication, JetBlue is aware of what it is doing on this entrance.
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