JetBlue revealed it will cease operating flights from popular US cities, including multiple routes from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, in the foreseeable future.
Travelers hoping to catch flights from JFK to Austin and Houston, Texas., and Miami, Fla., should reevaluate their travel plans as JetBlue told staff on Wednesday that those routes would be cut in 2025, according to CNBC.
Other routes around the US axed by the major airline are flights from Westchester, NY, to Charleston, SC, and between Jacksonville and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The airliner is also closing down all flights from San Jose and will stop using its Mint business class on Seattle flights.
For those looking to use the airliner out of JFK to fly across the Atlantic, the company announced it will remove flights between the Big Apple airport and London’s Gatwick Airport. It will also drop its second JFK-Paris flight, CNBC reported.
The changes were announced as JetBlue’s latest moves to return to consistent profitability and cut costs.
“Recently, we made some network adjustments in certain markets, removing some underperforming flying from our schedule, allowing us to redeploy resources, including our popular Mint service, toward high-demand markets and new opportunities,” JetBlue told CNBC in a statement.
The announcement comes after JetBlue said its revenue and bookings were better than expected for November and December, resulting in shares shooting up more than 8% on Wednesday.
However, the airline said that it has faced profit troubles in Florida since the end of the COVID pandemic.
“Florida remains a strong geography for JetBlue, however post-COVID, we haven’t been profitable in Miami due to the dominance of legacy carriers like American and Delta there,” JetBlue’s vice president of network planning and airline partnerships, Dave Jehn, told the outlet.
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JetBlue also said that ending service between JFK and Miami would make the carrier overstaffed in Miami, and it is working with crew members on options, like relocating them to other cities the company serves.
JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty and her team are focused on reducing costs and culling unprofitable routes, Jehn explained.
However, the carrier said it will continue to serve flights from Miami to Boston.
The company said fliers affected by the upcoming changes could select alternate flight options or possibly receive a refund if no other routes are available.
The airliner’s announcement of permanent flight cancellations and route changes also comes as the company and others in the industry deal with the Pratt & Whitney engine grounding.
In 2023, RTX, Pratt and Whitney’s parent company, said a rare powder metal defect could lead to the cracking of some engine components.
When the issue was announced, an estimated 600 to 700 engines needed to be inspected for cracks in high-pressure turbine disks and high-pressure compressor disks. Each inspection takes up to about 300 days to perform.
According to Airline Geeks, in 2024, JetBlue averaged around 11 grounded aircraft due to engine unavailability. The New York-based airliner uses the PW1100G and PW1500G engines to power its A220 and A321neo fleets.
JetBlue’s third-quarter earnings report stated that it expects the number of grounded aircraft to average in the mid-to-high teens in 2025.
The announcement also follows some of the nation’s top airline executives, who were grilled on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for packing on fees for checked luggage, assigned seats, and other perks to extract more money from passengers.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate’s investigative subcommittee, hauled in top brass from American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Spirit Airlines, and Frontier and slammed the carriers for charging exploitative fees.
JetBlue executives were not among the airlines being questioned by the committee.
