Last year, I wrote about JetBlue’s intentions to fly to London in 2021 when they will be able to make the flight on their new A321LR.
At the time I noted that they would try to get slots to fly to London Heathrow, but may have to settle for Gatwick.
Flying into London Heathrow is slot controlled and peak slots can cost nearly as much as it costs to buy control of El Al.
SAS sold 2 slot pairs to American for $75MM and Air France/KLM sold a pair of slots for $75M as well. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Air New Zealand sold off its off-peak Heathrow slot for $27MM.
Based on those figures, it seemed like a long shot that a low cost carrier like JetBlue would pick up Heathrow slots, but UK Aviation News is reporting that JetBlue has indeed picked up slots for flights from both Boston and JFK to London Heathrow! Perhaps they got a COVID-19 bargain?
Either way, that’s amazing news for US travelers, who will soon be able to fly on a low cost carrier into London’s premier airport for the first time. JetBlue offers speedy free internet, business class fares that are more reasonable than the competition, and one-way fare pricing that should change how the competition prices flights to London.
The flights are expected to launch in late 2021. Here’s hoping for some intro fare bargains, perhaps I’ll get over my terrible luck on flights to London?
I’d assume that flights to Amsterdam and Paris would be a natural fit for JetBlue after launching London service. If the flights are successful, perhaps JetBlue will become a global carrier in the future!
Will you fly JetBlue to Europe?
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20 Comments On "JetBlue Lands Slots At London Heathrow!"
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“Lands spot”
Get it? Haha
Ewr?
Mint to LHR definitely seems nice although with no lounge or otherwise premier experience one has to wonder if the future of premium class travel will look like this, more segmented to cut costs and still provide premium experience or fliers will stay with legacy carrier with multiple routes (irops) and lounge etc
Who doesn’t have a cc with lounge access? Come on man, you a junkie?
Lol dude I do but the market doesn’t exist on us junkies it’s the corporate travel and one has to wonder if with a non competitive mileage program among other stuff of B6 will make this profitable
I’m through with jetblue, so a big no for me
They will have only five of the A321LR’s in 2021, so if there is a maintenance issue or flight incident it may be a long wait for the replacement. Either that, or they have slots in Gander also.
5 is way more than enough to operate a daily BOS-LHR and JFK-LHR flight.
Didn’t they also just partner with AA? Irops can be handled with that arrangement
The Europe routes will be outside of the scope of that agreement.
If they just plan on keeping the other 3 grounded and ready for backup.
They now have a limited but expanding Northeast partnership with AMR so that may help.
Do you know which slots they have – is it like 3pm on Tuesdays?
Also, do you know who previously had those slots?
Do you think they will fly to south america (Brazil)?
FLL-GRU or FLL-GIG may be possible, but it’s outside the range of BOS or JFK.
They were said to be targeting a second airport. I hope it’s Stansted.
I don’t consider Jetblue an LCC anymore. Regardless I think they would be better off starting new routes in the USA instead. They have huge holes in their route maps in the midwest just to name one example.
I do hope to try this one out. Although I have to mention that I’m not counting on any changes with the legacy carriers on OW pricing. Norwegian has OW pricing and that doesn’t seem to change much.
Norwegian is a ULCC.
JetBlue is a premium LCC. The majors are much more likely to compete with that.
Let’s hope
will we be able to use our JetBlue “healthcare heroes” free roundtrip flights for this?