JetBlue
adds premium class to Boston flights on corporate demand
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[June 23, 2015]
By Jeffrey Dastin
(Reuters) - JetBlue Airways Corp on Tuesday
said it will add its premium "Mint" class to transcontinental flights
from Boston, the first new city for a service that JetBlue credits with
helping it steal share from competitors.
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JetBlue will offer Mint service, the airline's answer to first and
business class, on flights from Boston to San Francisco starting
March 2016 and to Los Angeles starting in the fall of that year. On
each route it will operate up to three round-trips daily on Airbus
Group SE A321 aircraft.
The move reflects the budget airline's plan to roll out Mint to more
cities since it entered the lucrative market for premium travel a
year ago, starting with Mint between New York and the California
hubs. JetBlue says it has won corporate customers in part because
its Mint seats, which recline fully into beds, are priced below
competitors' business-class fares.
"Corporate travel managers from companies that had never been
willing to talk to us before (are) calling us and saying, 'Can we
talk to you guys about a deal?'" Marty St. George, executive vice
president for commercial and planning, said in an interview.
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St. George said JetBlue has raised Mint prices at least twice
because seats have sold out too fast, noting that higher prices will
keep more tickets available for last-minute bookings.
Dave Clark, the airline's vice president for network planning, said
in an interview that JetBlue would consider additional West Coast
destinations for Mint but would stop short of placing it on all
transcontinental routes, which cannot necessarily sustain demand for
the premium seats.
"We'll grow this as much as we can," he said.
JetBlue also said it will operate an average of 118 daily flights
from Boston in January 2016, up from 111 a year earlier. It also
will start flying to Nashville for the first time, with service from
Boston and Fort Lauderdale beginning in the spring of that year.
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Clark said the New York-based airline's guidance for 7 to 9 percent
capacity growth in 2015 remains unchanged.
JetBlue is the only major U.S. airline to forecast positive unit
revenue growth this quarter, which Clark attributed to results from
Mint, Fort Lauderdale and Boston, where it is the largest carrier.
He added that JetBlue has fed on incoming traffic from international
partners such as Emirates [EMIRA.UL], lining up schedules to connect
with the airline.
(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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