I’m back! I know at least some of you missed me, but I’m going to admit to cheating a little today. See, we were in Europe for two weeks with the kids, so I put this post together before we left to give me an extra buffer coming home. So, enjoy this and I’ll have more current stuff starting tomorrow.
JetBlue has finally decided to give up on the West Coast. Its new plan says it will focus on leisure travelers along the East Coast, and that has always been where it has done best. But this isn’t to say that the airline didn’t try, try, and try again to make the West Coast work over the years. It never did, but let’s take a look back at all those efforts.
In the Beginning
It wasn’t all that long after JetBlue started flying that it began pointing its planes west. Its first flight to the coast was in July 2000 from JFK to Ontario, followed in August by JFK to Oakland. Those began as 1x daily but made it to 2x daily each by summer 2001 when Seattle also joined in at 1x daily.
At this point, all the flights to the West Coast were there to create options for New Yorkers as the airline grew into the slotholdings it had been gifted there. CEO David Neeleman had plans to turn these airports into something more, but in Ontario, it was unable to get the deal it needed. It looked down to Long Beach.
The LGB and OAK Focus Cities Go Long
In late August 2001, JetBlue started with 2x daily from JFK to Long Beach. The airline had scooped up the remaining available slots in Long Beach and was ready to use them. Of course, 9/11 happened shortly after service began, but that was not going to stop JetBlue.
Initially, service focused on long-haul. By summer 2002, JFK – Long Beach had jumped to 4x daily, and 2x daily was introduced from Washington/Dulles to both Long Beach and Oakland.
In September 2002, the first short-haul routes were introduced along the West Coast. Fittingly, the first was to connect the two focus cities in Long Beach and Oakland with huge frequency, more than 7x daily. Long Beach – Las Vegas followed soon after with 3x daily with Salt Lake at 1x daily.
By summer of 2003, Long Beach had become the place to be for flights to JFK. There were 7x daily operating that summer as people came from all over the LA area to fly to New York and take advantage of the low fares, live TV, and good legroom that weren’t available anywhere else. This frequency continued for the next couple years, peaking at 8x daily in summer 2005.
July 2005 JetBlue West Coast Route Map
Data via Cirium
During this time, JetBlue slowly expanded into its LGB slotholdings, but not everything worked. It took a chance on flying from Atlanta to both Long Beach and Oakland in 2003, but those were quickly killed. Fort Lauderdale came around at the same time from Long Beach, and that had more staying power.
By 2004, we saw the rise of Boston with both Long Beach and Oakland flights beginning at 2x daily, going up to 3x by summer 2005.
Outside the two focus cities, additional West Coast markets got East Coast flying, including Burbank, Las Vegas, Portland (OR), San Diego, San Jose, and Sacramento.
By the summer of 2006, JetBlue had added Long Beach – Sacramento, but these were more opportunistic routes as opposed to a key part of the strategy. Long-haul still ruled, but that would change quickly.
Virgin America Ruins Everything
Virgin America started flying in the summer of 2007 with its fancy purple mood-lighting, low fares, TVs, and a generally-cool vibe. That was all well and good, but the real problem for JetBlue was that it was flying from the primary airports of LAX and SFO to JFK. All of a sudden, those alternate airports weren’t looking as good.
JetBlue tried to get ahead of the threat by starting its own SFO – JFK and Boston flights, but in LA it held strong on Long Beach. It may not have realized just how much this would hurt. At 8x daily, JetBlue already had too much frequency from Long Beach to JFK, but it would drop only to 6x daily in summer 2007 and 5x daily in 2008.
By the end of the summer of 2008, JetBlue had left Ontario entirely and pulled Burbank back down to only flying JFK and inexplicably 1x daily Las Vegas after trying things as varied as Orlando, Salt Lake, and Washington/Dulles. In Long Beach, with frequency down, it had to come up with a new strategy. It opted to shift the airport’s focus to short-haul.
Short-Haul Ramps Up
The short-haul growth from Long Beach actually started in May 2008 when JetBlue added 3x daily to San Jose, 2x daily to Seattle, and 1x daily to Austin. At the end of the summer, Portland (OR) started at 2x daily with SFO at 3x daily.
July 2009 JetBlue West Coast Route Map
Data via Cirium
That next summer in 2009, JFK saw only 3x daily with Boston at 2x daily, but that was also the summer that JetBlue realized it needed to be at LAX. It started from there with 2x daily each to Boston and JFK. The balance of power had shifted, but JetBlue hoped short-haul in Long Beach would work.
It wouldn’t.
San Jose was an immediate failure, and JetBlue moved those frequencies to SFO. It proved to be too much and didn’t last long at that level. Yet the pressure to figure out a workable plan continued to increase.
JFK had jumped to 4x daily from LAX by summer 2010 and LGB had dipped down to less than 2x daily. Long Beach – Fort Lauderdale moved to LAX too. that meant there were more slots that need to be used elsewhere, so short-haul had to carry the burden.
This wasn’t just a Long Beach problem. Much of the intra-west flying from Salt Lake was gone, and even Oakland – Boston went summer-seasonal. JetBlue was forced to go bigger in markets like Las Vegas where the distance was short and demand was generally good. It was a way to lose less money, but it wasn’t a winning strategy.
A Series of Small Cuts
Over time, things just didn’t work out, but not a grand scale. Long Beach – Chicago ended in June 2012, Burbank – Las Vegas finally died in January 2013. And in summer 2014, the end came for Washington/Dulles. That wasn’t about the West Coast so much. After that point, service stuck around only to JFK and Boston from Dulles before it was exited completely in 2019.
The year 2014 also brought the introduction of the Mint business class cabin. That, however, was only in LAX and San Francisco, not Long Beach or Oakland.
Each cut put additional pressure on JetBlue to figure out how to use the slots in Long Beach. It took advantage of an airport rule allowing airlines to squat on slots and not use them fully. It just had to reach a certain threshold. The problem with this strategy was that other airlines could step in and use those slots during the time JetBlue wasn’t using them. And that’s when the long beginning of the end arrived.
Southwest Comes to Long Beach
In June 2016, Southwest landed its first airplane in Long Beach. It started with Oakland and soon added Las Vegas. But it couldn’t grow more than that, because JetBlue controlled the lion’s share of slots.
JetBlue could have caved and walked away, but instead, it doubled down and decided to fight. It ramped up utilization to keep Southwest at bay, and it picked up more slots as the airport was able to add more due to lower noise coming from the quieter, more modern aircraft flying at the airport.
In August 2016, JetBlue added Reno while San Jose came back in January 2017. Fort Lauderdale even returned in May 2017. Meanwhile, frequencies spiked in others markets like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.
This big increase in capacity did not work, to the surprise of nobody, including JetBlue itself.
Looking International
JetBlue couldn’t compete with Southwest, so it figured it could keep up flying those slots until it could put a new plan into place. It tried to make an effort to get a customs facility in Long Beach. It figured with that, it could begin flying to Mexican and Central American beach destinations where it could make more money. Local politics ended that.
The mininformation and rhetoric from the anti-airport crowd was fierce. They had convinced enough residents in Long Beach of the laughable idea that there would be A380s flying to China that pressure mounted. In 2017, the Long Beach City Council voted against even continuing to study the idea. The plan was dead.
With no hope of flying internationally, JetBlue got weird. It tried to find a niche where there was some demand for its product. Fort Lauderdale went away in January 2018, but Steamboat Springs and Bozeman joined the network with 2x weekly seasonal service. This was a hail mary.
At this point, JetBlue had tried to make the West Coast a destination from the East Coast again with the return of Ontario from JFK in September 2018 and an increasingly lengthy winter season to Palm Springs. Long Beach had no real future since it was an origin.
As slots continued to be added at the airport, Southwest kept growing and JetBlue kept failing. Then, the airline found the excuse it apparently felt it needed to walk away.
COVID Hits
When COVID hit, the entire industry disappeared overnight, and JetBlue was forced to finally make some hard decisions.
Oakland disappeared immediately, and JetBlue would never return to the airport. From Long Beach, service limped along with occasional flying to JFK, Reno, and Salt Lake City. A couple others surfaced over time, but they didn’t last long.
Long Beach hadn’t really worked for JetBlue in ages, but now it was too hard to ignore. JetBlue could have just pulled the plug, but instead, it had another hare-brained idea.
JetBlue Moves Up the 405
JetBlue’s Long Beach operation came to an end when flight 231 from Salt Lake City touched down on runway 30 at 11:03am on October 6, 2020. That day, the airline moved its entire operation up the road to LAX.
With LGB still performing horribly, JetBlue took advantage of newly-available gate space at LAX that opened up during the pandemic. Most of the routes from Long Beach moved up to LAX, but the airline tried a whole bunch of new ideas as well.
July 2021 JetBlue West Coast Route Map
Data via Cirium
JetBlue started LAX to Charleston (SC), Hartford, Jacksonville, and Richmond in the “long and thin” market category, several of those getting a shot from Las Vegas as well. It also finally went international from LAX, adding Cancún, Liberia, Los Cabos, San Jose (CR), and later starting Nassau and Puerto Vallarta.
LAX Starts to Unravel
Most of these efforts at LAX failed. Richmond didn’t make it out of 2021. Austin, Bozeman, Raleigh/Durham, San Jose (CR), and Seattle ended before summer 2022. Charleston and Seattle were gone by the end of 2023 with Cancún shortly after.
Those weren’t strategic cuts, however. Those wouldn’t come until JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes was pushed out in February 2024. That’s when the airline finally made the decision that should have been made years before.
The Death of the West, Part 1
The first round of cuts hit in June 2024 at the beginning of the summer. LAX lost most of its short-haul flying with the end of Las Vegas, Liberia, Miami, Puerto Vallarta, Reno, and San Francisco. Orlando was gone by September with Hartford and Newark ending in October.
The only short haul flights left from LAX were Los Cabos and Salt Lake City. It looked more and more like a destination than an origin, but the end was delayed. And other West Coast airports were not to be spared either.
The Death of the West, Part 2
When JetBlue rolled out its winter schedule for 2024, it created a new normal. The airline left Burbank and decided not to come back to Palm Springs for winter. It even suspended JFK – Seattle for winter since that’s when leisure demand is lowest.
From LAX, the last short-haul flights to Los Cabos and Salt Lake City were canceled outright. So what is left?
Here’s the winter plan:
January 2025 JetBlue West Coast Route Map
Data via Cirium
- Boston – Las Vegas (3x daily), Los Angeles (3-5x daily), San Diego (1-2x daily), San Francisco (4x daily), Seattle (1x daily)
- Fort Lauderdale – Las Vegas (2x daily), Los Angeles (4-5x daily), San Diego (1x daily, holidays only), San Francisco (2x daily)
- JFK – Las Vegas (3-5x daily), Los Angeles (7-9x daily), Reno (1x daily, holidays only), San Diego (1-2x daily), San Francisco (5-6x daily)
- Los Angeles – Buffalo (1x daily, holidays only), West Palm Beach (1x daily, winter only)
And that’s it. As you can see, with the exception of a couple of long-haul LA routes, this is all about feeding the airline’s main Boston, Fort Lauderdale, and JFK focus cities.
Presumably, there will be changes to the summer plan, but as of now, here’s what is expected to come back seasonally:
- Boston – Portland (OR), Sacramento, San Jose
- JFK – Ontario, Reno, Sacramento, Seattle
- Los Angeles – Buffalo, Hartford
Again, other than a couple LAX long-hauls, it’s all about the focus cities. And this is really how it should be. The West Coast focus cities are dead, and the flying that remains is meant to serve the focus cities where JetBlue remains strong, in the Northeast and Florida. It was one heck of a run, but now, JetBlue is making smart business decisions.
