Jetblue and United are teaming up. The airlines announced a partnership on Thursday to sell each other’s flights and link up their loyalty points programs. It’s the latest move by JetBlue to expand its network of routes.
For years, Jetblue has been searching for the one — an airline to partner with, said Richard Aboulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory.
“They've been trying to grow. They need to be bigger than they are,” Aboulafia said.
Jetblue tried to merge with Spirit Airlines.
“Just to get the capacity and the routes,” he said.
But a court blocked the merger over antitrust concerns. JetBlue also tried to partner with American Airlines, said Meghna Maharishi of the travel intelligence firm Skift.
“Both of those airlines were coordinating their schedules. They were coordinating their pricing out of the New York and Boston areas,” Maharishi said.
A court put a stop to that, too.
“Because it was seen as anti-competitive and essentially almost like a merger, but without going through the actual approvals process of a merger,” she said.
Maharishi said the new pairing between JetBlue and United is more likely to withstand antitrust scrutiny. Because, this relationship doesn’t run very deep.
“They’re not coordinating schedules. They’re not coordinating pricing. It’s really mostly just loyalty benefits,” she said.
United gets something out of it too, including access to JetBlue’s network in the Caribbean. And another New York airport.
“They get an entry into JFK, which is something they have long wanted,” she said.
Right now, United accounts for about 70% of all flights out of Newark, an airport where air traffic controllers briefly lost flights from their radar screens. Starting in 2027, United will take over some JetBlue slots at JFK. But what does that partnership mean for customers?
“The people who are gonna benefit from this are the frequent flyers,” said Dan Bubb, a commercial pilot-turned-airline-researcher at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. And he said people with miles and status on one airline will be able to use all of that for the other.
“But I don't know that it's going to really help the average flyer who occasionally flies that much,” he said.
Bubb said the partnership could be the first step toward an attempted merger.
“We know in the nature of the airline industry, you know, ever since deregulation, 1978, lots of airlines have merged,” he said.
But, he said that would invite a whole new round of antitrust review.
