I’ve spent the past couple of days picking up the first few airports as my family chases the 25 airports to complete the JetBlue 25 for 25 promotion. Part of our early plans involved very cheap same-day turns on Caribbean routes from San Juan to St. Thomas and St. Croix. After barely making it in St. Thomas, we cancelled the same-day turn in St. Croix, realizing that it just wasn’t possible.
Flights between San Juan and the US Virgin Islands are among the cheapest in the JetBlue network
Along the planning process for our JetBlue travels, I stumbled on the fact that JetBlue operates some Caribbean routes out of San Juan with very attractive pricing.
Blue fares between San Juan and the US Virgin Islands are among the cheapest I’ve seen, with San Juan to St. Thomas and St. Croix as inexpensive as about $75 one-way from San Juan. It sometimes costs a bit more in the opposite direction, but given the very short distances/flights (San Juan to St. Thomas involves a flight time of about 16 minutes!), these look like a great way to pick up several airports in a very short period of time.
Keep in mind though that JetBlue sells tickets both for JetBlue-operated flights and Cape Air-operated flights between the islands. However, the Cape Air flights do not count for 25 for 25. There is just one JetBlue-operated flight in and out St. Thomas and St. Croix each day. The same plane arrives and turns around to go back to San Juan.
Since it’s the same plane, these flights look like the perfect opportunity to do a same-day turn (in other words, to fly to the destination — in this case, St. Thomas or St. Croix — and turn back around to fly back (to San Juan). Since Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are both US territory, I assumed this would work like any domestic flight. I envisioned getting off the plane at the gate and just standing there for a few minutes until boarding began to get on the flight back to San Juan.
However, I probably should have been tipped off that a same-day turn isn’t a good idea when JetBlue told me that I couldn’t buy it . . . .
As you can see above, when you try to buy a “round trip” ticket, JetBlue says that the flights overlap. Google flights makes it look like this round trip can be purchased.
I thought maybe the system was just programmed to disallow less than an hour between directions because in most such situations, any delay would make the return impossible to make. However, in this case, I figured that there was no real cause for concern since the flights are operated by the same plane — if the outbound were delayed, the return would be as well. I went ahead and booked the legs separately. That’s when I learned why they didn’t allow this….
The US Virgin Islands are in a separate customs area
When we arrived in St. Thomas, we disembarked down a staircase on the tarmac. To my surprise, the only entry point to the terminal was to baggage claim. All passengers need to exit the secure area of the airport.
That came as a surprise to me — as did the fact that, to get to the gate area once again, we had to pass through not only airport security but US Customs also. I later learned that is because that while the US Virgin Islands are part of US territory, they are not part of the customs territory of the United States. All travelers pass through US customs on the way out of the Virgin Islands.
Still, as we had about an hour between arrival and departure, I figured that we would probably be OK. We got through the customs line relatively quickly and the security line didn’t look unmanageable. However, it moved slowly. As the minutes passed, my wife’s anxiety just about reached a boiling point. Our flight was already boarding by the time we got to the TSA officer and the line was moving very slowly to get to the scanners.
Thankfully, we made the flight — getting on eight or nine minutes before the boarding door was scheduled to close. As it turned out, the door didn’t quite close on time as the flight waited for a few more stragglers, so we got on with time to spare, but not nearly as much time to spare as my better half would have preferred.
The next day, we had the same-day turn booked to St. Croix. However, I cancelled it when I learned that the same situation would repeat, but with even less time between flights. The St. Croix flight was scheduled to land 12 minutes before boarding would begin for the flight to San Juan. The Internet suggests that the security line at St. Croix moves particularly slowly in the afternoon. I didn’t think it likely that we’d arrive, get out of the secure area, and make it all the way back in time to board the flight to San Juan.
We didn’t have the time to change our return to San Juan to the next day, so we abandoned plans and simply flew home from San Juan.
I’ll note that it might be a little faster if you have TSA PreCheck (we don’t, but now I wish we did!). Still, I would highly recommend planning an overnight on both islands if you plan to pick them up en route to the 25 for 25 milestones. St. Thomas has a few Wyndham properties and a Marriott along with a Hampton by Hilton scheduled to open in the coming months. St. Croix has a Marriott that can sometimes be bookable with a Marriott 35K certificate. It’s easy enough to plan an overnight — save yourself the stress and plan a night between flights.
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What happens if you book on Jetblue operated flight and then they cancel at last minute all Jetblue operated flight and put you on cape air? Would we get credit or how to force a credit? It happened to us 2 weeks ago and not sure how to find out if will get credit? When they put us on Cape Air we asked them to put Jetblue number but no way to know or verify? This was a flight from BOS to MVY
Actually this could happen many times for this promotion so how to track our progress?
So I saw one flight you can book is FLL- SJU – connecting through MDE – if I booked this flight do I have to go through customs in Colonbia or can I just hang in terminal ???
Edit: never mind. I don’t know the answer.
Never mind that, I think cabotage only
applies if it’s a foreign carrier. Sorry, momentarily forgot that key detail.
Gotcha – I am going to call
jetblue tomorrow and ask – on many days that is the first connecting flight JetBlue shows after all direct flights
Tell your wife that MY wife put off doing TSA pre-check for a long time (the annoyance of having to go to a building the 1st time). But, she did it in March and now she says it’s TOTALLY worth it! Especially with kids or any medication, etc.
I know a lot of us think “well, if I do that, I might as well go for global entry” but since you probably have 12 cards that offer both, don’t hesitate to take the halfway step and just get the pre-check.
Cheers!
I have Global Entry which gives me TSA pre-check and I fly in and out of St. Thomas regularly. As long as I am not checking a bag and have already checked in online, the longest it has ever taken me to get through customs and security and to my gate has been about 15 minutes. Average time is 8-10 minutes. Having seen what those lines can look like (backed up completely out to the sidewalk out front) and knowing that “Island time” is a real thing, I would never want to fly through there without it!
If I remember correctly you need your Global Entry ID card at STT, correct? Without the card GE is useless.
I always carry mine and have it out ready so I don’t know for sure but I always assume they will ask for it. I don’t trust the system enough to not carry it with me lol.
LOL I just have to ask how in the world do you guys not have precheck? use one of your many cards 🙂
Thanks for the write up tho since I also am eyeying these fares.
Gulp! Thank you Nick. Great PSA. Sorry for your stress. I had both of these turn-arounds planned.Not anymore… Tomorrow, I’ll be attempting an FLL-PUJ-SJU flight with 2 hours to make my onward flight ( not a connecting ticket ). I’m getting prepared to find a later flight to SJU in the event immigration is slow.
Data points on same day turn around in places like ( JFK to) RDU,ROC,ACK MVY etc would be appreciated. Being my first ” challenge ” I may have to learn the hard way.
I took this SJU-STT flight about 10 years ago. We took off early and ALMOST landed before our originally scheduled takeoff time.
sorry Im lost. I thought we get credit for flying into a B6 City only, so as long as you fly B6 into SJU , SJU is crossed off so then simply fly Cape back to SJU it doesnt matter that Cape doesnt count since even if it does you already got SJU credited, thats unless you dont fly into SJU on B6 to begin with and then need the City
You can do that if you want, though keep in mind that Cape Air is significantly more expensive (and as they operate Cessnas on these routes, my wife wouldn’t have wanted to fly on a plane that small).
In our case, we had intended to fly into Ponce and then fly SJU to STT and back to SJU to check off both. In STX, we planned to do SJU-STX-SJU-HPN. There was no Cape Air flight that would get back to SJU in time for the HPN flight. That could have worked for STT – but, again, the Cessna would have been a deal-breaker in my family and the cost would have been too much and we didn’t think it would be necessary.
from dates I checked Cape was $40 more, if $40 will bust ones Budget then IMO they shouldnt be doing this promo at all. I hear the Mrs not wanting to fly a Cessana , did it SJU to Viquenes yrs ago was neat sitting next to the pilot only person aboard
The same day turn turnaround could work in curaçao and cayman, they have small but efficient airports. But it’ll be tight. Don’t bring a checked bag!
Not having PreCheck deserves an entire podcast episode all by itself.
Nick mentioned not having GE / PreCheck a couple of years ago (??), and I thought it strange then. But given the amount of trips he has taken since then, especially the ones with his family, I’m also still surprised that he doesn’t have TSA PreCheck (both because of his job, and the number of credit cards he surely has that reimburse it). While I personally finally got PreCheck a couple of years ago after procrastinating, it has been awesome not to have to take electronics out the bag … but more importantly, when traveling with P2 and son, it has been critical to make it easier and less stressful for the family. Now, having used the free CBP MPC app, and it being a breeze, I still don’t have GE. Not sure I need GE yet …
His reason given is that Albany is a small.airporr so he doesn’t need it. But then he definitely flies through other airports on returns and even departs from NYC. Honestly I suspect that they can’t get precheck for some reason
I can totally understand why you’d suspect that, but that’s not it at all. Just haven’t cared about it enough. See my response below.
Regarding electronics, our home airport (ALB) and many other airports have the newer scanners where nobody takes anything out of their bags.
You know how some people think that all of us folks who chase elite status way overvalue free breakfast? That’s exactly how I feel about precheck and global entry.
In all my years of extensive travel, I only once ever missed a flight because of the security line (and that day, you should have heard the moaning from the pre-check line from people asking what they had paid for since their line was almost as long). It definitely would have been good to have in St. Thomas, but there haven’t been enough of those times for me to find it compelling to get. We are the type who aren’t going to cut it closer getting to the airport later because we have TSA precheck anyway.
I will admit though that if we traveled more domestically, maybe it would matter more to me? In the average year, we do far more international than domestic travel and most of that is in business class, so we sometimes have access to a priority security line, flying out of JFK Terminal 1 there’s the landside priority pass Lounge with it’s dedicated security checkpoint, etc.
But because we will do a lot of domestic travel next month with this, if we end up at Staples in the next week or two (it’s 70 mi each way, so I don’t know whether we will or not), maybe we’ll enroll.
Now we need to hear from someone who has GE or TSA PreCheck because I think not having either is just that rare!
#1: Edit needed for “mote” stragglers
#2 : I’m truly shocked given the amount of traveling you do along with the many credit cards which provide a TSA benefit that Nick Reyes does not have TSA pre check
Given that this is a credit card travel miles website I’m shocked that you don’t have pre-check/global entry!
Nick, you obviously have 284663 credit cards that offer reimbursement for Precheck. Why!?
Honestly, I’ve never really cared about it. This was the first time I think it ever might have made a difference in whether we make a flight, so I’ve never cared enough to bother with it.
Out of our home airport, there are rarely more than 5 or 10 people in line (sometimes none at all for an afternoon departure). And we did break down and get CLEAR finally a couple of years ago because we were traveling on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and were staying at the Hyatt Regency MCO so we could literally enroll downstairs the night before when we weren’t trying to catch a flight (though, personally, I’m still not wildly excited about giving up unnecessary biometric data in general). Anyway, with CLEAR, we usually don’t have to worry about a long line on the way home, either.
I’ve never felt compelled to bother going to enroll in TSA PreCheck and the interview for Global Entry is a pain — there’s nowhere near us to do it, so we have to try to schedule an appointment months ahead of time to make a 7-8 hour round trip drive for an interview — that’s not appealing. Everybody likes to say, “you can do an interview on arrival”, but after a 7 or 10 hour flight back to the US with young kids, the last thing on earth I want to do is slow down the process of getting out of the airport — neither my kids nor my wife are going to have the patience for that. And Mobile Passport has historically worked swimmingly well — I’m usually through immigration almost as fast as Global Entry but without needing the hassle of the application process and interview. If we lived closer to a major airport, maybe I’d make the time to do it.
All that said, I did wish we had it this weekend. I got an email this morning that you can enroll in TSA PreCheck now at CLEAR checkpoints. Since we ended up getting to the airport 5.5hrs before our flight from SJU yesterday, maybe we would have enrolled in TSA Precheck there if I had realized and thought about it! Maybe the next time we’re at a Staples we’ll do it.
I’m still not sure it would matter at STX. We didn’t fly there, so I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t feel wildly confident about it.
The interview on arrival is so simple, at least in Boston (which I generally consider to be one of the most inefficient airports in the U.S.). We’ve done it twice now with both of our young kids. The first time the added wait was 15 minutes, the second time it was 5 minutes. Maybe it matters much more to us since we fly out of BOS, but it was never about possibly missing the flight. It was always about getting through security (and to the lounge) faster. It’s so much more useful than clear, though we use both. It would surely be worth the interview time for this challenge alone.
Agree with giving up unnecessary biometric data although we did do TSA Pre because it was offered in our city but global entry wasn’t offered.
Oh boy. I have the same itinerary plan to both STT & STX. We have Global Entry and I vaguely remember being able to skip the line with the Global Entry card (which of course we didn’t have at the time). I wonder if that would help clear customs faster?