JetBlue has had a fantastic premium product for more than decade, Mint. The problem is, Mint is a fully-flat bed that doesn’t work for most of the airline’s operation. JetBlue could justify it on money-makers like LAX to JFK, but it certainly couldn’t put it on Boston to Nashville. The “core” fleet is filled with coach seats that have great legroom but limited ability to generate extra revenue. That has been changing, and it now changes even more with the BlueFirst domestic-style First Class product that will fill out the rest of the fleet. This is a no-brainer of a move, and now we have more detail on how this will look.
BlueFirst will be put on the entire fleet that has no Mint service. The majority of the airplanes in that subset are A320s, so let’s start there with a trip down memory lane.
I’ve written this up multiple times over the years, and each time I have to add a new seat map on the right. It’s incredible that we are now on the sixth iteration.
Originally, JetBlue had 162 seats and good seat pitch for all except that last, non-reclining row. Upselling was not a thing in this configuration. Soon, then CEO David Neeleman pulled out that last row, and that meant legroom behind the wing got even better. Still no upsell. Then, JetBlue learned it could eliminate one more row and cut out a flight attendant. That gave a ton of room up front, and I believe even that didn’t create upsell, because why would you pay for an extra inch or two when you already had 34″?
Finally, the Even More (legroom/space/etc) era began, and that’s when regular coach standardized at 34″ with a small cabin of 38″ for the upsell. But still, if you have 34″, how much will you pay for a few more? You don’t need it.
It took JetBlue forever, but in the era of slimline seats, it could finally fix this mess more easily. Standard seating went down to 32″ while Even More space went to 35-36″. JetBlue added 12 more seats to the airplane, which was helpful, and cutting legroom in the back helped create incentive to buy up. But 32″ on slimline seats? That’s still too good for a base product.
The addition of 12 First Class seats in the front of the plane would normally require shrinking the total number of seats onboard, but that’s not happening here. The seat count stays the same. In front of the exit, we obviously see six seats go away since these three BlueFirst rows have 4 abreast instead of 6 in coach. But JetBlue makes up for that by adding an extra row in the back. To do that, seat pitch goes down again from 32 inches to an industry standard of 30 to 31 inches.
In the end, JetBlue trades 12 EvenMore seats away in favor of 12 BlueFirst seats which will absolutely generate more money for the airline. Just a big seat in BlueFirst alone would do it for JetBlue, but this is JetBlue and it’s not going to just throw a big front seat out there. It’s going to do this in style.
We now know what the product is going to look like, and here it is:
Looks nice and fancy, huh? It apparently has “Tuft & Needle’s T&N Flex™ foam” which… is a good thing? But really, it’s just another First Class seat. It comes with all the usual bells and whistles you’d expect in First Class, but there are a couple of things that are fun and different.
The screens will be big at 13.3″, and of course they’ll have Bluetooth as you’d expect. But they are now adding in a fun feature to the Blueprint entertainment system. BlueFirsters, as I’m gonna call them, will be able to order food, but now they can also order drinks. They can even create their own drinks in “Mixologist Mode” by choosing the alcohol and mixers a la carte. Is this ground-breaking and world-changing? No, but it’s a nifty feature that people will find nifty. Sometimes that’s all you need to stand out.
The food… oh yeah, the food. JetBlue has done wonders in Mint, and now it’s doing that on a smaller scale.
The plan is to give travelers bento boxes called FirstFare on flights 900 miles and longer. This includes a main, a side dish, and a dessert. There will also be a ton of branded snacks, all of which can be ordered through the entertainment system. Oh, and outside of food, those on the redeye will get a little extra with a blanket and a “snooze kit.”
This looks like a very solid product that people will love. More importantly for JetBlue, it’s a product people will pay for. It probably should have been done a decade ago, but the airline was too focused on other things during the Robin Hayes era. Now, it’s doing the work it needs to do to get back on track. The only question is whether or not it can outrun its mountain of debt with all of these revenue-producing initiatives.
