One Mile at a Time has reported that JetBlue is restricting Mint award access to partner airline programs, first reducing access for Qatar Airways Privilege Club and then Etihad Guest. This isn’t necessarily a surprising development (I expected that we would see a sharp reduction in available award space at least once the planned partnership with United gets off the ground), but it is nonetheless disappointing.
JetBlue no longer making “I” class space available to partners
Previously, it had been possible to determine which JetBlue flights would be available to partner airlines by finding flights selling the “I” fare class. A tool like ITA Matrix can be used to find flights that have “I” class fares available by clicking the button to show advanced controls and entering “C:B6” for the routing code (to filter to JetBlue) and “F=bc I” as seen here:
Unfortunately, JetBlue is apparently no longer making “I” space available to partners but has rather created an “A” fare class that is only used for award tickets. Since that isn’t a fare class in which JetBlue sells revenue fares, I don’t think you can find space with ITA Matrix anymore.
However, suffice it to say that it seems that few if any seats are being made available to partners at this point.
That stands in pretty stark contrast to the way things were prior to this spring. It used to routinely be possible to find multiple seats available in Mint class through Qatar Airways Privilege Club. Last summer, I flew five passengers in JetBlue Mint from Boston to Dublin and saw more seats available on the flight as departure neared.
I expected big changes, but not necessarily so soon
When rumors first began circulating about a partnership between JetBlue and United that would include reciprocal mileage redemption, I lamented that this would be the death of good JetBlue availability via Qatar Airways. In fairness, that prediction was more so based on the fact that far, far more people would be competing for award space if and when JetBlue opened the floodgates to United Mileage Plus. Far fewer people were familiar with Qatar Privilege Club and Etihad Guest and how to transfer points and book these awards than there are folks who have United miles and would presumably see JetBlue awards in search results. That would obviously lead to fewer available seats.
However, it seems that JetBlue has turned things off even sooner than expected. To some extent, that makes sense. One Mile at a Time points out that the “I” fare class is the discounted business class cash fare bucket. Giving partners access to the same space as paying customers comes at quite an opportunity cost if the airline thinks it can sell the seats to customers paying cash. Further, given the sort of revenue-based program that JetBlue offers, it meant that it was possible to get Mint seats for far fewer points by using Qatar Avios that it would cost if using JetBlue TrueBlue points. While that isn’t uncommon in the world of frequent flyer miles, we’ve seen most of the US-based programs take steps away from that model in recent years.
We don’t know for sure whether this is a permanent reduction in award availability, a step being taken in preparation of a new normal when launching awards bookable via United, or if there is some other explanation of this change. It is certainly possible that we’ll see award availability ebb and flow, but if you’ve been collecting Avios and eyeing JetBlue space, it seems far less likely that you’ll find availability in the current environment.
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Laziest loyalty team in the business bar none (TrueBlue that is… FM is insanely productive!)
Limiting partner access to premium cabin award space seems to be the way of the world. AA allows little to no partner access to transcon Flagship First. There’s Singapore, United, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if Emirates closes the back door access to first class that some have been writing about.
I’m not certain this is truly global just yet. I noted, and FM and others have echoed, that Singapore opens more space to Air Canada than it’s own FF members. Other airlines provide access to partners at an unbalanced level: Asiana gets fewer Star Alliance partner awards than, say, Air Canada. It seems to remain based on the general profitability of the airline to the partnership/alliance.
Where is this A class visible? In fact, I quickly tried to find the receipt for a recently booked (directly from JetBlue) Mint award ticket, not sure where to find the fare class used. Email/online just seems to say ‘Mint’…
Check your boarding pass when issued.
Looking at an old JetBlue boarding pass — just says Mint. Meanwhile, a receipt/email confirmation from Qatar for JetBlue Mint clearly says ‘Class I, Cabin I’ — which is what would show ‘Class A, Cabin I’ presumably. That’s what I was looking for… (even Delta receipts have various OV, ON, etc. codes on the receipt for different awards, upgrades, etc.).