Although the announcement hasn’t yet been made, the internet’s aviation geeks, AvGeeks, have figured out JetBlue’s plans for London.
Citing documents released by ACL, a landing slot coordinator, JetBlue has been awarded Boston to London’s Stansted Airport and New York’s JFK to London Gatwick Airport. According to the ACL site, JetBlue secured 868 slots for BOS-STN and 434 slots for JFK-LGW. That appears to be two daily flights from Boston and one from New York.
In an interview with Bloomberg earlier this year a JetBlue spokesperson cautioned that flights were likely to begin later next year, later than originally planned. JetBlue is still keeping key parts of its plan unwraps. Not only has the airline not made an announcement yet, but it hasn’t revealed the configuration for the A321 that’ll be flying the route.
In the past, a spokesperson has said that JetBlue would have more “Mint” premium seats on transatlantic flights than the 16 Mint seats on the jets it uses for premium transcontinental flights today.
By location, Stansted is connected to economically important areas such as the City or the industrial and tech corridor around Cambridge and along the M11 but the price conscious passenger will be found at Gatwick since slots couldn’t be secured at Heathrow. There is a risk though that JetBlue’s pricing edge may look less impressive at Gatwick next to Norwegian. Even British Airways is making a play at Gatwick, with Boeing 777s.
