Low-cost airline «JetBlue Airways»

JetBlue Airways (stylized as jetBlue), is an American low-cost airline owned by JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ: JBLU). The company has its corporate offices in Forest Hills, near the New York City borough of Queens. Its main base is located at John F. Kennedy International Airport.In 2001, JetBlue began operations at Long Beach Airport in Long Beach, California, and then at Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2004. It also has operations at Fort Lauderdale, Washington-Dulles, as well as the Airport Orlando International. The airline primarily serves destinations in the United States, with flights to Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Ecuador and Guatemala.

JetBlue maintains a corporate office in Cottonwoods Heights, Utah, and a satellite office in Darien, Connecticut. JetBlue is a non-union airline.

David Neeleman founded the company in February 1999, under the name «NewAir». In September of that same year, the airline was granted 75 routes at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and formal authorization from the United States was received in February 2000, beginning operations on February 11.

JetBlue’s founders had initially intended to call it a «taxi» and thus use the color yellow to associate the new airline with New York City. The idea was scrapped for several reasons: the negative connotation of New York taxis; the ambiguity of the word taxi with respect to air traffic control; and threats from investor JP Morgan to withdraw $20 million of the airline’s total $128 million in initial funding, unless the name was changed. The founders of the airline also considered using the city of Trenton, New Jersey as their base of operations, but this idea did not prosper. On March 26, 2009 they announced trips to San José, the capital of Costa Rica. In mid-2009, JetBlue began daily flights on the route between the cities of Orlando (Florida, United States) and Bogotá (Colombia).

JetBlue was one of the U.S. airlines that made a profit during the sharp decline in airline travel after the attacks of September 11, 2001. JetBlue became one of the most popular airlines in the country, and currently has approximately two billion dollars in market capitalization. Financial results were positive for the airline throughout the years 2002-2004, and many analysts and journalists helped the airline to its success. The airline industry responded to JetBlue’s market presence by launching rival carriers by strong airlines: Delta Airlines launched Song, and United Airlines launched another rival called Ted.

Song has since been dissolved and is being absorbed back into Delta Airlines, and United Airlines has announced that Ted will also be discontinued as a separate brand.

In 2002, JetBlue acquired LiveTV, LLC for $41 million in cash and the retirement of $39 million of LiveTV’s debt. LiveTV equips JetBlue with 36 channels of live television programming from DirecTV satellite at every seat. Two years later, JetBlue announced it would add 100 channels of XM Satellite Radio, Fox TV shows and 20th Century Fox to its in-flight entertainment.

Since 2016, the standard of service has been limited. Each piece of luggage costs an extra 20 or 25 dollars in the cheapest ticket class, and 12 additional seats are planned for the Airbus A320 (reducing the seat pitch from 88 cm to 84 cm). At around 47 cm, the widest seats in the fleet are installed in the cabin of the Airbus A220 presented in January 2021.

At the beginning of January 2019, the company ordered 60 Airbus A220-3002s.

In April 2022, JetBlue Airways announced that it was issuing an offer to purchase Spirit Airlines for 3.6 billion dollars3.