LONDON – JetBlue will today announce its long-awaited transatlantic flights between Boston and London, in the next step of its transatlantic expansion.
The carrier currently has services from New York to London and will be a significant addition to the route network, taking on its legacy competitors.
JetBlue will announce its long-awaited service from Boston to London later this morning. It’s going on-brand for the press conference at Logan: Dunkin Donuts with David Bowie and Elton John playing in the background. pic.twitter.com/pkqwl8Fold
— David Slotnick [email protected] (@David_Slotnick) April 5, 2022
Service Information…
The carrier will offer two flights per day, one to London Heathrow and one to London Gatwick.
JetBlue will use its Airbus A321 Long Range aircraft, seating 24 people in Mint, 24 in Even More Space, and 90 in Core economy.
As per Simple Flying, the scheduling of the flights look to be the following:
- Boston to Gatwick: starting July 19th, 1x daily; B62104, 18:37-06:35+1 (Tuesday); 18:57-06:55+1 (Monday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday); 19:02-07:00+1 (Saturday); 20:02-07:55+1 (Sunday); 1x daily
- Gatwick to Boston: beginning July 20th, 1x daily; B61926, 10:35-13:42 (Saturday), 11:50-14:57 (Sundays), 12:15-15:02 (Monday and Wednesday), 12:25-15:15 (Tuesday, Thursday, Friday)
- Boston to Heathrow: starting August 22nd, 1x daily; B61620, 18:30-06:30+1
- Heathrow to Boston: beginning August 23rd, 1x daily; B61621, 08:25-11:13
The carrier is also making up for the lost ground Norwegian had, especially since the last time the Gatwick-Boston route was served was in 2020 when the airline had operated it for four years.
It is key to note that the route is to be announced later today, with comments to follow on AviationSource presently.
Slow & Steady Wins The Race…
The strategy that JetBlue is taking with its transatlantic ventures is very much “slow & steady wins the race”.
It is making significant efforts to ensure that the airline is growing in the right places on the transatlantic front, and this will no doubt make competitors sweat.
Particularly on the legacy front, as JetBlue ramps up further over the next few years, this will apply a lot of pressure on pricing, which will no doubt stimulate this over-saturated market further.
The airline is able to make this happen through the leasing of slots at Heathrow from Qatar Airways.
If JetBlue continues on this path, then there is no doubt that the level of success it has experienced up to now will continue going into the busy Summer 2022 season, which is vital for a lot of transatlantic carriers.
Overall…
It remains clear that this is yet again another big deal for JetBlue. That was the case when it first ventured into this sort of market, and things seem to be working out for them.
Looking ahead, the airline will be focusing on filling those planes up as much as possible in order to continue such success into the Winter 2022 season, where destinations like New York & Boston are even more popular at that time of year.
But for now, we await the official announcement from JetBlue which will follow later today, and then see how the carrier fares in action.