After two years of uncertainty, this summer is expected to be one of the busiest travel seasons in history. But pent-up travel demand coupled with ongoing staffing troubles and higher fuel costs might also make it unusually chaotic. Major U.S. airlines like Southwest and American have been scrambling to make changes to their summer schedules by adding and dropping destinations to meet traveler demand while also taking into account the challenges ahead. Now, JetBlue has announced that it's pulling back from nine cities, starting in June. Read on to find out where the airline is dropping routes this summer.
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JetBlue previously warned that its network would likely shrink after the pandemic.
iStockJetBlue added around 135 new routes to its schedule between early 2020 and the end of 2021, Simple Flying reported last year. The majority of these were domestic expansions, except for around 40 added international routes. But the carrier was never planning for all of these new routes to be permanent.
"We've expanded a lot—and a lot of routes won't stick around. We'll be going back to our roots and long-term plan again," Andrea Lusso, JetBlue's vice president of network planning, said during World Routes in Milan in 2021, per Simple Flying. According to the news outlet, some of these were experiments for JetBlue to chase revenue opportunities temporarily during uncertain times.
The airline just announced that it is cutting summer flights from several cities.
iStockJetBlue is now reworking its summer 2022 network, Insider reported on April 26. According to the news outlet, the airline is dropping and suspending various routes to prepare for what is expected to a busy travel season. Starting June 1, JetBlue will temporarily suspend service between Miami, Florida, and Hartford, Connecticut, as well as between West Palm Beach, Florida, and Providence, Rhode Island.
And the airline is also suspending several routes that were originally set to make a comeback this summer. JetBlue last operated flights between Boston, Massachusetts, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and between Los Angeles, California, and Richmond, Virginia, in March and October, respectively, but the carrier is temporarily halting their return until the fall. The Boston-Haiti route will return on Sept. 10 and increase to twice-weekly on Nov. 2, while the Los Angeles-Richmond route will return four times a week on Aug. 1.
Newark, New Jersey, is also losing JetBlue flights to and from three different cities this summer: Aguadilla, Puerto Rico; Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts; and Nantucket, Massachusetts. The Aguadilla route will return four times a week on Sept. 8, while both the Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket routes will come back thrice weekly on Sept. 9.
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But JetBlue is also permanently removing service in two cities.
ShutterstockJetBlue confirmed to Insider on April 26 that part of its adjustment also includes its permanent departure from two separate markets. According to the news outlet, the carrier will no longer service Kalispell, Montana, and Boise, Idaho. JetBlue flew between New York and both of these cities up until Sept. 2021, and now the routes are getting axed for good.
Travelers in Boise can still travel to and from New York via other carriers like Delta, Avelo, United, and Spirit, but JetBlue's route was the city's only nonstop connection to the Big Apple. Meanwhile, the airport in Kalispell will still be serviced from New York by American Airlines going forward, per Insider.
A number of issues have caused JetBlue to adjust its upcoming schedule.
ShutterstockA spokesperson for JetBlue told Insider that the company made these changes to its upcoming schedule last week, and that the dropped flights are meant to help "ease pressure on our operation during this busy season so that our customers can depend on us to get to them where they need to go."
The spokesperson also told Insider that some of the routes did "not make as much sense" given what is happening right now with "significantly higher fuel prices." According to CNN, the new flight cuts come after JetBlue already made the decision to drop 8 to 10 percent of its routes for May following a number of last-minute flight delays and cancellations in April due to weather, fuel, and staffing issues.
"We want customers who love the JetBlue experience to have confidence we will deliver it to them this summer," Joanna Geraghty, the airline's president and COO, told Insider. "We let our crewmembers and our customers down in April, and we must perform better. The investments we're making will help reduce delays and cancellations during the busiest travel period."
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