On last week’s Frequent Miler on the Air podcast, Greg and I discussed the rumored partnership between JetBlue and United Airlines. Reuters grabbed headlines reporting about the deal last week, though View from the Wing suggested this might be coming months ago and then expanded further upon that with thoughts in response to last week’s reports. The expectation is that some sort of partnership will materialize that will allow for the earning and redemption of frequent flyer miles across both programs. If we assume that rumors are true, Greg’s take was one of excitement for a partnership — mine was entirely different.
A partnership between JetBlue and United seems like a win for those not based in New York
On the podcast, Greg initially gushed with excitement over a partnership between JetBlue and United. That’s because Greg is based in Detroit. Unfortunately, Greg’s home airport only has limited Star Alliance connectivity. By contrast, New York’s JFK airport is heavily served by numerous Star Alliance carriers.
Greg could theoretically have access to a decent amount of Star Alliance award space if he would just position to New York JFK Airport.
The problem with that is that he can’t get from Detroit to New York JFK on Star Alliance. That’s because United does not operate any flights to or from JFK airport. Thus, Greg (and people in any city that isn’t New York) are left to either fly United to Newark and have to get all the way across the city to JFK or to fly a separate positioning flight to JFK on another carrier. While that can be done, it creates stress and headaches if the separate positioning ticket gets cancelled, delayed, or changed.
However, if JetBlue partnered with United, Greg would theoretically be able to use United Mileage Plus miles to book a ticket that included a leg on JetBlue from Detroit to New York JFK and then something like SWISS from JFK to Zurich (to give one example). That would make it far easier for Greg to make good use of his United miles.
A JetBlue / United partnership feels like a tremendous loss for many on the east coast
Selfishly, I was rooting against this partnership the moment I saw the headlines for several reasons.
First of all, I live in New York State and within a drivable distance of New York JFK (and without any direct flights there, driving is my only viable option to get to JFK). Thanks to United having pulled out of JFK, there often is more Star Alliance award availability from and to New York JFK than one might find at other major hubs. I imagine that is largely due to the difficulty of connecting to and from those JFK flights. If United’s millions of members suddenly gain broad access to that availability thanks to the ability to connect through JFK via JetBlue, it seems very likely that the competition for award availability will make it far more difficult to find seats on those Star Alliance flights. While it will create opportunity for many people, it will dry up opportunity for those of us based within a drivable distance of JFK.
Conversely, I don’t like what this will do to award availability on JetBlue.
For the past couple of years, JetBlue has been operating its Mint business class service to Europe out both New York JFK and Boston. We have at times seen excellent award availability on those routes in business class, which can be booked with Qatar Avios when available. While it isn’t the best price on the market for business class to Europe, I used it last year to get five passengers to Europe in business class.
Part of the reason that these flights are at times bookable is because booking them isn’t obvious or intuitive. One has to know how to use ITA Matrix to be able to quickly look at availability over a long stretch of time, logging in to the Qatar website to search requires two factor authentication, and there are probably many people who have Avios who don’t even know that their Avios can be moved to the Qatar Privileges program. That keeps the redemption “under wraps” tom some extent.
However, if those same JetBlue flights suddenly become available to anyone with United MileagePlus miles, I would expect fierce competition for seats, resulting in a pretty low likelihood of snagging one of those awards. Since I also live a drivable distance from Boston, this would be a bummer for me.
Again, this will probably be a benefit for some folks who don’t live near Boston or New York and who are able to take advantage of JetBlue spacer using United miles. However, I’m selfishly not excited.
Like it or not, this seems more likely than not
While I’m rooting against it for my own desire to have access to these awards, I think it is pretty obvious that something is in the works and likely to be announced in the coming months. While it certainly isn’t a “lock” that United and JetBlue will try to partner up, and it is even less certain that such a partnership will not face regulatory scrutiny, it seems like the smart money is on the partnership materializing.
Whether and when it becomes possible to use JetBlue TrueBlue miles to fly on United or United Mileage Plus miles to fly JetBlue remains to be seen, but if you have miles in one program or the other, you’ll want to keep an eye on this.
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It’s not all about you Nick, tell us folks throughout the US how it will be GREAT!
I’m vehemently against this tie up but for a different reason: United already has way too much control over the greater NYC market. If they get the JFK slots which is ultimately what they want out of this then they’ll be vastly more powerful, making New York an uncompetitive duopoly. In what world is that good for the flying public?
Your assertions about award space vanishing are likely correct. What worries me is that that’s just an ancillary effect of the public getting screwed royally if this goes through.
My main market is SJU-EWR and SJU-PHL. When AA/B6 partnered briefly, it nixed cheap flights on B6 to PHL, but then hose never returned. Now it looks like it’ll do the same on SJU-EWR. The slog to PA from JFK is brutal! Really hope this doesn’t cut me badly, but it will def be negative on my route
I’m excited for the possibility to use my 200K JetBlue points more easily. There are way more UA flights than JB flights out of SFO. But I understand your trepidation, Nick.
On seats.aero yesterday, I noticed 2 things:
1) JetBlue has really favorable mint pricing through its own program. Seeing some 60k + minimal fees on BOS-MAD and BOS-EDI routes several days over the next couple months. Less availability on return, but decent availability on the way out.
2) These seats were not showing up on Etihad or Qatar, at least the inventory being pulled by seats.aero. I didn’t check the programs themselves.
Perhaps this means that JetBlue is changing mint pricing a little bit and becoming more protective of those seats for their own members? That would be a needed change in a partnership with UA. Time will tell, but it was interesting to see.
Would you feel differently if Jetblue flew from ALB to JFK instead of LGA?
No, I’d still take the cost of a one-way rental car on either end of the trip in exchange for better availability. Albany is an hour each way by car and the flight time is probably scheduled for ~30 minutes or whatever. On a good day, I can get to JFK in 3.5hrs, so it might only save me 2 hours (depending on traffic). I’d take better JFK availability and Mint availability over the small time savings if I could get it!
But, like I said, it’s selfish of me. If I lived in Detroit or Orlando or Los Angeles or whatever, I would probably be rooting for it. Maybe.