JetBlue has been a lot of things over the years, but most of all it’s been a point-to-point airline. It loves to fly people nonstop where they’re going, and if you want to connect, well, that’s a you problem. Connecting fares have never been very good, and flights weren’t timed for connections. But wait, things appear to be changing, at least a little. Does JetBlue actually want connections now? Yes it does.
But before we talk about a change, we have to really understand how little JetBlue cares for connections. I went back through DB1B data to help demonstrate this point. Keep in mind this is only domestic data.
JetBlue Domestic Traffic Local vs Connect
Data via Cirium
As you can see, there is very little connecting traffic in the domestic JetBlue network, well under 10 percent since the beginning of time at that airline. Much of this has to do with network design, but it’s more than that. Fares have never been attractive for connections, and schedules haven’t been built to support them anyway. Further having a hub in the corner of the country doesn’t really lend itself to a useful hub. (Again, remember, I’m talking about domestic connections. We’ll talk about international in a bit.)
But I think we need to put this in context. Let’s compare to other airlines:
% Local Domestic Traffic by Airline for Q1-Q3 2024
Data via Cirium
Clear enough now? Yes, Allegiant has a smaller percent of connections, but you know why that is? It doesn’t sell connections. So, yeah. That would be hard to beat.
So what has changed or maybe should I say, what is changing? We do have to consider JetBlue’s growing footprint. When the airline entered the European market, it was clear that this wasn’t likely to work on local traffic alone. That’s just natural. This is using ARC/BSP data to look at traffic from the US to Europe where each airline listed is the dominant carrier:
% Local US-Europe Traffic by Airline for Q1-Q3 2024
Data via Cirium
If you’re flying the overwater long, that’s how you become the dominant carrier. So all those connections from JetBlue to other airlines don’t count. This suggests that only about half of JetBlue’s European flights are filled with locals while the rest are connecting.
That all makes sense, but now JetBlue is going further. This was in its recent summer network press release.
In addition to its growth in Boston, JetBlue is adding new New England routes from Providence, Rhode Island, and Hartford, Connecticut, to New York’s JFK, providing onward connectivity to JetBlue’s extensive JFK network.
JetBlue has made it clear under its JetForward plan that it is is working to rebuild its presence and increase dominance in its natural backyard. Think about it this way. If there was a Revolutionary War battle fought in a place that was part of what would become a free state, that’s JetBlue’s backyard.
Of course it is trying to make up for what it lost in its big Boston focus city, and it is still trying to rejigger after the end of the American partnership in New York. But we’ve seen JetBlue enter Islip and Manchester while building up Providence and Hartford. It wants to be more relevant in those places, but it isn’t going to make that happen solely with nonstop flights. That’s especially true since Breeze will drop in A220 in any city that it finds on a map.
The plan appears to be to focus on Florida and San Juan from those cities (with Hartford also getting seasonal LAX). Then to be more relevant, it needs to offer that connectivity. And how it is doing that? Well, JetBlue is create a stealth hub in its focus cities of Boston and New York/JFK.
Let me explain. Let’s look in JetBlue’s backyard and expand it a little, call it north of the Mason-Dixon Line and anything from the Indiana-Ohio border toward the east. I’m also going to throw in Washington, DC, and you’ll see why in a second. These are all the routes from those cities that go to or from the Boston or JFK hubs:
July 2025 map via Cirium
Now, of this group in here, JetBlue has only single daily flights a handful of the markets. I’m going to exclude Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Hyannis because those are destinations with no origin traffic. Excluding those, the following routes have single daily ops:
- Boston – Halifax, Islip, Presque Isle, Syracuse
- JFK – Detroit, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Providence, Syracuse, Washington/National
Some of these are new markets while others are not, but they all share something in common. Every single one leaves the Boston hub between 8 and 9pm or the JFK hub between 9pm and 11pm and stays overnight, coming back early the next morning.
This pattern does a couple of things. First, it makes it easy to connect through the hub to the south, especially those Caribbean destinations that have a morning down, afternoon back pattern. (It is not good for Europe, of course.) Second, it frees up space in the congested hubs and finds the airplanes a cheaper place to sleep overnight.
In a sense, these flights are catch-alls for people who live in those cities and want an easy way to get to places they can’t fly nonstop on any airline. JetBlue can go to the most important places nonstop, but then it can add utility by finally offering sensible connections.
JetBlue has hit a lot of low-hanging fruit since the new management team took over, but now we’re getting into smaller-ball type of moves. That just makes them more interesting.
26 comments on “JetBlue Might Kind of Like Connections Now”
Very interesting analysis; wasn’t expecting to read of B6 adding flights to support connections to the Caribbean, but it makes sense. Given the timing of the flights, would this also help with aircraft utilization a bit, or is B6 running it planes enough that that’s not really a factor?
Cranky,
Why has B6 in its existence ignored the Midwest? What has been their rational? To only focus on the coasts ignores major population areas.
I’d guess mainly because of Southwest’s position there vs. the Northeast when JetBlue started. WN had no service to the NY market and only alternative airports to BOS, and they weren’t nearly as big in Florida then as they are now, so that was their first big shot.
Throw in the initial marketing strategy of being the “cool kid”/”Target to WN’s Walmart”, JetBlue’s ambitions to build on the West Coast, and concentrating on the Caribbean and Central America, and that the coastal markets are wealthier than the Midwest, and there you go.
“…and that the coastal markets are wealthier than the Midwest”
Not all of them. I doubt upstate NY cities like Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo are as wealthy as Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus.
The upstate NY markets had (and still have, to some extent) benefit in getting political support from Sen. Schumer.
Buffalo can also draw to some extent from southeast Ontario (St. Catharines has no scheduled flights, although there are some charters, and Hamilton’s airport is very limited). Syracuse is home to the university, and was not served as well then as it is now. I really don’t know that much about Rochester.
Buffalo isn’t coastal even though it’s in NY.
Wonder how Alaska compares in this aspect as they are… 1. coastal, 2. in a corner of the country & 3. have little mid-west presence as well. That said, Alaska has grown quite a bit from Seattle while JetBlue had to retreat in order to fix things.
Depends on how you define “coastal”.
Cleveland bills itself as being on “the north coast”. Yes, this is mostly puffery or branding on their part, but since Buffalo is also on Lake Erie it would be easy for them to make the same claim as Cleveland.
Another example: Oswego NY has direct access to the Atlantic ocean via Lake Ontario and the St. Laurence Seaway. Wouldn’t that make them coastal or at least “coastal adjacent”?
Adjacent yes, but otherwise as you put it “puffery.”
Alaska has flights all over the midwest from their west coast hubs and focus cities. And AS has had a large connecting operation in SEA for decades, benefitting from connections to/from a) their namesake state, b) the small cities in the Pacific Northwest (which tend to be further away than the small northeastern cities are from BOS/JFK because of population density and geography), and c) Hawaii. For those reasons, despite being similarly-located in a corner of the country, AS has had a lot more connections than B6. Cranky’s chart has them at 84% local traffic, which makes connections much less important to AS than any of the big four (less than half the connecting traffic of AA or DL) but much more important than B6 (three times as much connecting traffic). Makes sense to me.
The main reason for the short hauls RON’ing in these smaller outstations is actually due to space constraints.
Due to construction at T6 in JFK and using their maximum allocated overnight parking spots in Boston, jetblue had to find places to keep planes overnight. So this is what they came up with!
This 100%.
Brett, it looks like JetBlue is trying to turn JFK /BOS into somewhat of a banked hub(if I am using that terminology correctly) to increase departures going east of these airports. Do you think we will see them decide to get back some of the LR orders to increase their Europe flying?
What Cranky is describing is not so much a banked hub as a natural schedule reality that happens to facilitate this type of connections.
From the small outstations, planes sit overnight then leave first thing in the morning, arriving at the major city (JFK/BOS in B6’s case).
From the major cities, overnighting planes (or arriving red-eyes) leave first thing largely for business destinations and destinations with several daily flights, clearing out gates for the arrivals from the outstations.
Then flights for leisure destinations tend to leave mid-morning (9ish), arrive early afternoon, then turn around and fly back, arriving late afternoon / early evening. That’s a good schedule for locals in the major cities (don’t have to get the kids up too early for the flight, arrive without too much of a wait before accommodation check-in, then leave after a morning to pack and hit the beach one more time). Then the flights to the outstations leave late evening after the planes have done a full day of flying to higher-revenue destinations.
Then as the flights to the outstations leave, the last set of flights from the major destinations can come in to JFK/BOS and the planes spend the night in the big city.
That set of schedule constraints happens to work well for connecting passengers from the small outstations without much competition (so locals there have to deal with the sub-optimal schedule) to leisure destinations while also serving the competitive big city markets with decent times, and also does well for aircraft utilization. I think it’s different from a deliberately banked hub, where you have banks throughout the day.
I never thought it would be cheaper to RON in uncongested airports instead of JFK or BOS but of course that makes sense. How substantial is the cost difference and does it make up for the expense of having the crew overnight as well?
Although B6 has never prioritize their connecting traffic, they have always been a feeder carrier for international airlines; EY, QR, EK, FI, all use B6 to fill their long-haul flights. I’m guessing the data you sent puts B6 to OAL as local PDEW?
This just proves the power of the hub and spoke system compared to point to point operations. Low cost and ultra low cost carriers have long tried to compete just for the local market but when legacy carriers serve not just the point to point market but also connections over the same segment, the legacy carrier has the advantage since they can offer the same fares as smaller carriers as well as higher fares and services above LCC/ULCC levels.
These moves do push up B6’s costs but they clearly believe they can carry more traffic on some of the longer segments. Like other LCCs, they have to cycle through a list of initiatives to see what works, many of which mimic what the legacy carriers do.
I do not understand why B6 has problems in the central part of the U.S. I live in Austin, TX and JetBlue has canceled its nonstop route between Austin and JFK. In Chicago if you do not want to go to BOS or JFK you’re out of luck. B6 is a good product that flyers anywhere in the U.S. would embrace. What am I missing?
For many cities it’s just a matter of competition making it difficult for JetBlue to get much local-origin market share – they can make a route like BOS-AUS work if there are enough JetBlue-loyal Bostonians who take to Austin and bring home again, but with everybody else having gone into AUS in a big way in the last few years, and WN’s major presence, local-origin market penetration is difficult and likely to be very expensive. I’m surprised B6 doesn’t fly AUS-JFK, this could just be a case of better uses for limited JFK slots.
Similar situation in Chicago – it’s a double-hub and a lot of the people who would normally be “premium leisure” JetBlue flyers fly UA or AA instead.
From Austin to the NY/NJ area daily
UA 5 to EWR
AA 2 to JFK
DL 3 to JFK
NK 1 to EWR
That’s 11 nonstops a day, and three of them are on legacies with hub operations in NYC and also large operations in Austin. It is very difficult when all you have is origin/destination traffic. Too much competition on the route.
Connecting at JFK sucks for anyone. Between that and Logan, it’s difficult to sell connections when your main bases are in the corner of the country. There’s a reason why Atlanta is the busiest airport in the world and it’s not because people really want to visit Atlanta.
Also, why would I fly Bradley – Kennedy when it can be driven in 3 hours? I always assumed the only reason why Delta ever flies that route is slot squatting. Delta doesn’t fly it now and United doesn’t waste time with Bradley – Newark.
The BDL to JFK flight isn’t about O&D demand (I don’t think anyone will be taking that flight to just go from Hartford/Springfield to NYC area or vice versa), it’s about connecting pax through JFK to other B6 flights to the pax’ final destination, similar to other short routes from non-hub cities to hubs (e.g., MKE-ORD, SMF-SFO, CLE-DTW, CHA-ATL, PDX-SEA). BDL to JFK does seem a little odd, but it makes much more sense when you look at it that way.
Also, driving from the BDL area to JFK has a LOT of traffic uncertainty along that route, even outside of rush hour, so one has to allow extra time to be safe. Most people who live within ~45 minutes of BDL won’t want to drive to JFK/EWR/BOS unless they are either doing a longer international trip (and thus driving to the larger airport to avoid a connection), are using a car service paid by their employer, or are facing a very significant difference in fares.
I knew that no one flies Bradley – JFK in order to go visit NYC. If you don’t want to drive, the train is a better option. But, JFK is still a crappy place to connect. If you wanted to fly somewhere that isn’t a nonstop from Bradley, I would choose to connect just about anywhere else. That’s why I assume that Delta and United don’t do it.
This somewhat reminds me of post-deregulation Pan Am where they need to start adding more domestic feed to keep alive their international operation. I personally would love to see jetBlue build up a larger presence in another city for domestic connections, say somewhere like AUS, MCI, or STL (I know there are issues at all 3 of those airports, just examples). I know it’s not in their cards at the moment. Just something I’d like to see.
I was just thinking JetBlue could setup shop in an ex-hub if it wanted to get a toe in the Midwest. STL is kinda falling apart, but is big enough to be an airline hub since it was for TWA. Same though for Memphis and Northwest.
Looking at the % Local Domestic Traffic by Airline graph, Southwest being almost at United’s level was surprising to me. Call me out of touch but I never ever really considered Southwest as a “connecting airline”. It’s always felt like a point to point airline to me…especially in California where I am.
I always thought of JetBlue’s lack of connection opportunities as a function of its network structure (hubs on the coasts including LGB). I never really viewed it as intentional by the airline to focus mainly on local traffic.