United Airlines and JetBlue partner – fewer JetBlue Avios redemptions available?

Low(ish) cost airline JetBlue has had a lot of coverage on HfP in the last few years as it tried to take on the existing transatlantic carriers.

Flying from Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh and Dublin to one or both of New York JFK and Boston, it has been using single aisle aircraft to keep costs down whilst still squeezing in flat bed business class seats.

Our review of Mint Studio is here (the bulkhead seats with extra room) and our review of Mint Suite (the standard business class seat) is here.

Do you know you can redeem Avios on JetBlue?

Not many people know that you can redeem Avios on transatlantic JetBlue flights.

This is NOT via ba.com but via Qatar Airways Privilege Club, due to the partnership between JetBlue and Qatar Airways. Taxes and charges TO the UK are just $10, making it easily the ‘least cash’ way to fly transatlantic.

Frustratingly, the Qatar Airways website has been unable to show JetBlue availability for some time which is why we haven’t discussed it more.

Those seats may be drying up soon

JetBlue reward availability has generally been very good because its own reward scheme – TrueBlue – is fully revenue based. You can redeem for ANY seat but at a generally terrible rate because you get a fixed value per point.

For partners which are not revenue based, such as Qatar Airways Privilege Club, JetBlue makes a separate pot of seats available. There is little competition for these. Until now.

United Airlines members will soon be able to redeem for JetBlue flights

Whilst well regarded, JetBlue has been having financial difficulties in recent years. An attempt to form an alliance with American Airlines fell foul of anti-trust regulation in the United States. It is now trying to shore itself up via a partnership with United Airlines.

It’s a complex deal due to the need to avoid regulatory scrutiny:

• JetBlue will give up seven daily slots at New York JFK to United, which rues the day when its previous management sold off all of its own JFK slots

• United will give up eight daily slots at Newark to JetBlue in return

• United flights will become bookable via the JetBlue website and vice versa, although there will NOT be codesharing

• United and JetBlue will interline, allowing baggage to be seamlessly transferred between connecting services

• United Airlines MileagePlus members will be able to redeem miles for JetBlue flights (which is why those transatlantic seats are likely to disappear) and vice versa

• members of MileagePlus and TrueBlue will be able to earn miles across both networks

• loyalty programme benefits will be mutually respected by both carriers (this ONLY seems to apply to MileagePlus members – elites of other Star Alliance programmes will not receive any benefits on JetBlue)

• United will adopt JetBlue’s proprietary software for selling hotels, car hire and other ancilliaries

The loyalty benefits can be summarised here (apologies that the image is relatively small – click to expand a little):

Conclusion

This is an interesting partnership, structured in such a way as to keep regulatory scrutiny to a minimum.

The announcement yesterday was effectively a ‘heads of terms’ and full details will be published later in the year.

What is absolutely certain is that seven daily slot pairs at New York JFK is nowhere near enough for United, which is desperate to rebuild a presence at the airport. It is difficult to see how this partnership ends in any other way than United Airlines trying to swallow its new partner.