Lots of cuts are coming on the JetBlue route map this summer. The carrier will trim more than a dozen routes and close five stations as part of its push to find profitability.
In a memo to employees the airline announced a number of cuts, planned to take effect from June 2024. Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale are the hardest hit hubs.
Los Angeles will lose most of its west coast services, three international markets, plus transcon service to Miami. The company expects to shed approximately 10 daily departures, or 30% of its operations at LAX.
The premium transcon service, including New York City, Palm Beach, and Fort Lauderdale will remain. Salt Lake City and Nassau, Bahamas both also appear to have survived the cuts, which is something of a surprise.
Fort Lauderdale will trim operations to Austin, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Salt Lake City in the domestic market. The carrier will also drop flights to Lima, Quito, and Bogota, all served from FLL. Those three markets will be station exits for the carrier.
Additional station exits include Kansas City and a formal closure of Newburgh-Stewart, New York. The latter had not seen service since COVID-induced cuts years ago.
The cuts are not much of a surprise, though perhaps some individual markets are. JetBlue shared investor guidance at least twice so far this year identifying plans for “reallocating capacity from underperforming markets to proven, high value leisure and visiting-friends-and-relatives geographies.”
In many of the markets – especially at Los Angeles – JetBlue faced significant competition. Indeed, the shift from Long Beach to Los Angeles during the pandemic was supposed to open up international opportunities for the carrier. And it did. But the company also anticipated 70 daily departures by 2025. It was not quite to half of that prior to these cuts.
And the broader operations did not prove profitable. Being the smallest airline in the market with no connecting traffic feed makes it hard to build up revenues.
No word yet on the impact to employees. Presumably those affected will be offered an opportunity to transfer to a different JetBlue city, though that is unlikely to be appealing in most cases.
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