United Airlines plans to go back to JFK — once more — in new partnership with JetBlue

United Airlines has a brand new buddy in Queens.

The airline is returning to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport once more, this time thru a partnership with JetBlue Airways.

The partnership, referred to as Blue Sky, will permit JetBlue consumers to earn widespread flyer miles on United and vice versa. It additionally contains reciprocal loyalty advantages like precedence boarding and roomier seats for vacationers with elite standing.

Some sides of the partnership, which the carriers introduced Thursday, will start as early as the autumn, even though the airways did not supply actual timing. They additionally didn’t supply monetary main points of the deal.

JetBlue’s leaders have lengthy stated they want a partnership to raised compete in opposition to greater airways like United and their shared rival Delta Air Lines.

The new partnership stops in need of the flight coordination that JetBlue had in its former alliance within the Northeast with American Airlines, which used to be struck down via a federal court docket on antitrust grounds two years in the past. Last yr, a pass judgement on blocked JetBlue’s plan to shop for suffering funds provider Spirit.

“This collaboration with United is a bold step forward for the industry — one that brings together two
customer-focused airlines to deliver more choices for travelers and value across our networks,” JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty stated in a information liberate.

United left JFK in 2015, and present CEO Scott Kirby has referred to as {that a} mistake as a result of shifting transcontinental flights to Newark allowed American to win over some company purchasers. It in brief returned in 2021, because of a Covid-era lull in visitors on the airport, the place capability is usually tightly managed via the Federal Aviation Administration.

United left JFK once more in 2022 as it wasn’t ready to safe long term slots there.

Kirby has many times stated he needs the airline to go back to JFK. The provider has struggled in fresh weeks with air-traffic staffing shortages and congestion at its Newark hub.

Under the brand new settlement, United will be capable of fly as much as seven day by day round-trip flights at congested Kennedy Airport, giving it extra breadth within the New York City house, even though the brand new operation will nonetheless be dwarfed via United’s primary hub within the house at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.

United’s JFK flights will start in 2027 on the earliest, the carriers stated. JetBlue, in the meantime, gets 8 flights at Newark. United did not say which routes it plans to function at JFK, even though its final foray used to be for provider to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

They airways referred to as the switch a “net neutral exchange.”