The carrier stated that eleven routes will now have the ‘Mint’ expansion, including Seattle, San Diego, Fort Lauderdale and Las Vegas as new cities for the service, which is offered exclusively on the carrier’s Airbus A321 aircraft.
“Mint helped traditional business class travelers realize there is a better way,” said JetBlue President and CEO Robin Hayes in a statement. “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.”
The company has 13 planes outfitted for Mint now and four more coming this year. It expects to take delivery of nine more Mint airplanes in 2017 and more the year after. Airbus and its partners need a six-month window in order to swap any A321 orders from the all-economy cabin that the airline had been taking to the upgraded Mint interior.
The following domestic routes that will see the upgrade are:
- Seattle to Boston
- Seattle to New York JFK
- San Diego to Boston
- San Diego to New York JFK
- Los Angeles to Boston
- Las Vegas to New York JFK
- San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale
- Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale
JetBlue’s announcement comes two weeks after it expanded ‘Mint’ to flights in the Caribbean, making it the only airline to feature lie-flat service on its regular flights there.
It also comes just days after losing out a bid battle to take over Virgin America. Alaska Airlines agreed to pay $2.6 billion in cash for the San Francisco-based carrier.
During the last decade, the U.S. airline industry has experienced an era of consolidation that has made it more competitive, and we are about to see now how airline no longer bid for their competitors but for customer retention and loyalty.
No comments:
Post a Comment