JetBlue Airways is making a stand in South Florida with new services to multiple cities later this year, and its preferred launching point is obvious: Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Earlier this week, the New York-based carrier said it will start “year-round, nonstop service” to Tampa; Atlanta; Austin, Texas; and Norfolk, Virginia. The Austin service will start Nov. 20, with flights to the other three cities taking off Dec. 4.
The airline also said it will add daily flights on multiple existing routes to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia. Most of those additions will take effect Oct. 26, except for Los Angeles, which will see its additional flight on Nov. 21.
“Fort Lauderdale has long been a key market for JetBlue, and we’re excited to keep growing with the region,” Dave Jehn, JetBlue’s vice president, network planning and airline partnerships, said in a public statement. “With new routes, more flights and the expansion of our award-winning Mint experience on more trips, and the best crewmembers in the business, we’re continuing to offer more reasons for South Florida travelers to choose JetBlue.”
“As a longtime FLL air service partner, we applaud JetBlue’s plans to add Tampa and Norfolk to our airport’s route map and resume flights to Atlanta and Austin,” Mark Gale, CEO/director of aviation at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International, said in the statement. “Additionally, the increased daily frequency on select high-demand U.S. routes this fall and the expanding availability of its Mint premium experience will all benefit FLL travelers.”
A ‘focus’ city
For more than 25 years, JetBlue has cast Fort Lauderdale as one of its “focus” cities — a major gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean as well as a jumping-off point for flights to multiple U.S. cities.
JetBlue said it is operating a summer schedule at the Broward County airport that constitutes “an average of 72 daily departures to 31 nonstop destinations from Fort Lauderdale.” In July, the airline resumed flights to Philadelphia and to Guayaquil, Ecuador.
The company said that by December, its Fort Lauderdale operations will have expanded to 95 daily departures to 37 cities.
“The airline will also continue to offer more transcontinental lie-flat seats from South Florida than any other carrier,” JetBlue said in its statement.
According to airport statistics, JetBlue was the No. 2 carrier behind Dania Beach-based Spirit Airlines in passengers carried through June, good for 19% of the Fort Lauderdale market.
JetBlue carried nearly 3.2 million customers, a decline of 8.2% from the year before.
Spirit, which emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings earlier this year, carried more than 4.7 million people or 28.1% of the airport’s passengers served, a decline of 17.9% from June 2024.
The airport’s Top 5 in passengers carried is rounded out by Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines.
During JetBlue’s unsuccessful campaign to take over Spirit, a move that was blocked by a federal court judge on antitrust grounds, the airline envisioned operating 250 flights daily out of Fort Lauderdale by 2027 had the buyout been approved. In early 2024, JetBlue went so far as to start flights to Tallahassee, a service that ended later that year amid insufficient demand.
This week’s service announcements for Fort Lauderdale came less than a month after JetBlue declared it is ending service at Miami International Airport, which is dominated by American Airlines and served by a wide array of other U.S. and international carriers.
The end in Miami will come on Sept. 3, with the final JetBlue flight lifting off for Boston. As with a number of other carriers industrywide, JetBlue has been weeding out unprofitable or marginally profitable routes and destinations from its network.
A now well-circulated staff memo from JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty noted the airline is continuing to cut costs due to continued softness in industrywide travel demand.
“We’re hopeful demand and bookings will rebound, but even a recovery won’t fully offset the ground we’ve lost this year and our path back to profitability will take longer than we’d hoped,” she wrote.
‘Fortress’ Fort Lauderdale?
JetBlue and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International, meanwhile, are continuing their collaborative project to build a new Terminal 5 that broke ground in late 2023.
The project, which is expected to rise to the east of Spirit’s Terminal 4, is nearing the completion of its design phase, airport spokesperson Arlene Satchell said by email Friday.
No structures have come out of the ground, with the site mostly a vacant flatland occupied by construction equipment.
“Its design package is almost 100% complete, which will help determine an updated targeted completion date and estimated total project cost,” Satchell said. “When built, T5 will be a two-level, five-gate domestic facility featuring check-in/ticketing, baggage processing, security screening, food/beverage, retail venues, and a pedestrian bridge or connector walkway to Terminal 4 and the Cypress Garage.”