In March, JetBlue announced the end of service to Baltimore, Kansas City, 5 routes from Fort Lauderdale, 8 routes from Los Angeles, and several other cuts.
In May, they announced the end of service for Puerto Vallarta, 5 routes from LGA, routes like LA to Newark and Orlando, and suspended winter operations for London/LGW and reduced winter flights to Paris.
In July, they announced the end of service to Burbank, Charlotte, Minneapolis-S. Paul, Palm Springs, Pointe-a-Pitre, San Antonio, and Tallahassee. It also ended routes like Fort Lauderdale-San Diego, Newark-Montego Bay, Newark-Santo Domingo, Los Angeles-Nassau, Los Angeles-Los Cabos, Los Angeles-Salt Lake City, Miami-Hartford, and more. The airline also seasonally suspended routes like JFK-Austin, JFK-Seattle, Boston-Amsterdam, Boston-Milwaukee, Boston-Salt Lake City, and Buffalo-Los Angeles.
That came after a costly failed merger effort with Spirit, the end of the Northeast Alliance with American, and corporate activist/raider Carl Icahn gaining board seats at JetBlue.
JetBlue is back with new cuts as it tries to shrink its way to profitability. The airline shrunk so much that it offered pilots 50 hours of pay to stay home. Pilots normally fly and are paid for 70-85 hours per month.
In the 4th round of cuts, it will end service to the tech hub of San Jose, California.
JFK-Miami will be discontinued, as the airline’s experiment with Miami service continues to falter. Only Boston service remains from Miami.
JFK-London/LGW will be eliminated.
JFK-Austin, JFK-Houston, and JFK-Milwaukee will also be cut.
Westchester County-Charleston, Fort Lauderdale-Charleston, and Fort Lauderdale-Jacksonville are being eliminated as well.
However, Westchester County will pick up JetBlue flights to Fort Myers instead of Charleston.
JFK-Tulum will now only operate in the winter. Boston-Grenada and Boston-Phoenix will also only have seasonal winter service.
Boston-Seattle and JFK-Seattle will no longer be operated by planes with MINT business class seats.
JFK to Paris will be reduced from 2 daily nonstops in the summer to just 1 daily nonstop flight.
However, JetBlue said that it will announce new Europe flights next week to make up for that.
What do you think of these route cuts? Will JetBlue be able to shrink to profitability?
