New York-based JetBlue Airways will introduce its Mint premium cabin on seven additional transcontinental routes from 2017, bringing the service to four new cities.
JetBlue will offer Mint on Fort Lauderdale-Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale-San Francisco, Las Vegas-New York John F Kennedy, San Diego-New York JFK, San Diego-Boston, Seattle-New York JFK and Seattle-Boston.
Mint will be rolled out on the routes starting in the first quarter of 2017, continuing into 2018, says the carrier. Sales will begin in the “coming months”, it adds.
The introduction of Mint on the additional city pairs will make JetBlue the only carrier to offer a lie-flat seat product on all of the routes.
JetBlue will take delivery of nine Airbus A321s configured with the Mint cabin in 2017, with “additional” deliveries in 2018, it says. The airline had earlier said it will take delivery of 10 A321s in 2017, without indicating how many of these will be configured with Mint.
The airline’s chief executive Robin Hayes says of the new Mint routes: “Our plan has long called for strategic growth of Mint on these valuable transcontinental routes, and now is the right time for us to capture this opportunity to bring much needed competition where customers are facing dwindling choices.”
JetBlue faces competition on all of its new Mint routes, although not all of its rivals offer a premium cabin, schedules in Innovata show.
It competes against Virgin America and Spirit Airlines on Fort Lauderdale-Los Angeles, and against Virgin America and United Airlines on Fort Lauderdale-San Francisco.
On Las Vegas-New York JFK, it competes against Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and Virgin America. Delta and American also operate on San Diego-New York JFK. Alaska Airlines is JetBlue’s sole competitor on San Diego-Boston, while JetBlue competes against Delta, Alaska and American on Seattle-New York JFK. Alaska and Delta offer competing service on Seattle-Boston.
Since debuting Mint in mid-2014, JetBlue has said repeatedly that the premium cabin has boosted revenue performance on its transcontinental routes. The airline now offers it on flights from New York John F Kennedy to both Los Angeles and San Francisco, and rolled out Mint on flights from Boston to San Francisco in March. Mint will also be offered from Boston to Los Angeles later this year.
In addition, JetBlue offers Mint on certain flights to the Caribbean, both on a year-round and seasonal basis.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
