American and JetBlue are launching a major partnership!
Put this on your list of things you didn’t see coming in 2020.
Earlier this year, American announced a massive West Coast partnership with Alaska Airlines and added Seattle to Bangalore and London, and now they’ve announced a major Northeast partnership with JetBlue.
With this partnership, JetBlue will continue to grow in New York JFK, LGA, and Newark. Unlike Alaska, JetBlue will not join Oneworld. They’ll simply codeshare with American.
American will finally add new routes out of New York JFK:
Tel Aviv (served by Delta and EL AL)
Athens (served by Delta and Norwegian)
Both long-haul routes will begin in 2021. Assuming there aren’t any additional cuts, JFK-TLV will complement Dallas’ new Tel Aviv service and JFK-ATH will complement ORD/PHL to Athens.
American will finally add new routes out of New York JFK to both Athens and Tel Aviv beginning in 2021. Once COVID-19 is over, American will continue to expand into Europe, India, Africa, and South America.
AA’s product is laughable at best. DL already has solid market share on Israel and there is not much left especially from New York. If anything I expect AA to get pushed out like what happened in HKG to DL since AA is the last of the US3 to start service to TLV
I was NOT expecting that partnership. I could see jetBlue and Delta partnering, but not American, especially after they have such a huge partnership with Alaskan! I would never fly American OR United during COVID because filling planes up is unsafe. In the long term, this isn’t the worst partnership, but Delta and jetBlue partnering could destroy American and United, especially in Boston.
I think Delta’s final Hong Kong route, SEA-HKG, failed because they dropped the Alaska partnership. Cathay swooped in months later and took over the route. Basically American’s plan is “resetting” their international network, and this is another move. They’re adding routes when airlines are weak and hoping to capture market share.
This time however, American has JetBlue’s massive presence at JFK to fuel the TLV and ATH flights.
I do agree with that previous point… now it has simply become the crutch that is the JV with KE, but that’s not going to kill DL.
Also delta already started tel aviv at least a month ago. This could prove very problematic to “steal” market share when you’re beat to the spot by your enemy
Going to be interesting to see what plays out at JFK. Those routes are already controlled by DL for the most part, but with plenty of AA loyalists in the NY area, And a new partnership with jetblue feeding into those flights, it’s going to be interesting.
I think jetBlue should have partnered with Delta instead. I just feel like the business models of jetBlue and American are too different for it to make sense that they are partners.
