JetBlue Airways and British Airways plan to implement a broad codesharing arrangement under which they intend to link their networks by jointly selling flights within the USA and between London and Europe.
The move, disclosed in a 22 May regulatory filing with the US Department of Transportation, comes as JetBlue seeks to strengthen its financial performance and tweak its operation following two strategic blows. Those include the forced failure of both its Northeast Alliance with American Airlines and its proposal to acquire Spirit Airlines.
Like the failed Northeast Alliance, the proposed JetBlue-British Airways codeshare deal targets JetBlue’s flights from Boston and New York’s John F Kennedy Airport.
The arrangement is to involve JetBlue placing British Airways’ code on 36 JetBlue domestic routes from Boston and 39 domestic routes from JFK, according to the regulatory filing.
Across the Atlantic, British Airways flights from London to 17 destinations in Europe – including places like Amsterdam, Budapest, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Paris and Zurich – are to carry JetBlue’s code.
Both airlines fly the London-New York and London-Boston routes, meaning the arrangement would allow each to sell, as their own, connecting flights on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
If approved by the DOT, the agreement would give British Airways another strong US partner alongside American. British Airways and American already have a codeshare arrangement and both are members – together with Aer Lingus, Iberia and Finnair – of a revenue-sharing transatlantic joint venture.
JetBlue had planned for its flights at Boston and New York to be closely coordinated with American Airlines as part of the Northeast Alliance, which those airlines revealed with great fanfare in 2020.
But a federal judge in May 2023 ordered the arrangement dissolved on anti-competitive grounds.
JetBlue next sought to strengthen its operation by acquiring Spirit Airlines, but a judge in the same court blocked that deal in January for the same reason, sending JetBlue back to the drawing board.
JetBlue has since been trimming flights from its network and has cancelled 2024 growth plans in a bid to stem losses and in response to Pratt & Whitney PW1100G engine problems that have left some of its Airbus A320neo-family jets grounded.
JetBlue lost $716 million in the first quarter.
