JetBlue is one of a few medium-sized air carriers operating within the United States. With over 280 aircraft and over 110 destinations, they have an expansive network across the U.S., Caribbean, South America, and now Western Europe. 

In this article, we will examine the outer reaches of their network, and where they have an enhanced presence for travelers looking to become loyal to the airline possibly.

JetBlue's Destinations

JetBlue has come a long way from its initial route network, which was essentially New York to Florida and California. Since its first flight in 2000, JetBlue has served 114 destinations across three continents.

They have most recently expanded into Western Europe, with flights from New York and Boston to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, and Edinburgh. 

Back on the other side of the pond, JetBlue currently operates transcontinental flights from the East Coast to major population centers on the West Coast, such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C.

They have a smaller presence in the central U.S. but still cover major cities such as Denver, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and New Orleans. 

However, JetBlue's network's core is run on the eastern seaboard of the United States, the Caribbean, and South America. Nearly every major city on the East Coast has daily JetBlue service; the same can be said for all the most popular Caribbean destinations. Places such as St. 

Thomas, Cancun, Punta Cana, Aruba, and Montego Bay see multiple daily flights from JetBlue's Focus Cities throughout the network. In South America, JetBlue currently serves a small selection of cities in the northern part of the continent, such as Guayaquil, Medellin, Cartagena, and Georgetown. 

They used to serve additional destinations such as Lima, Quito, and Bogota but have since closed those stations in an attempt to optimize their network and revenue-generating routes.

JetBlue's Focus Cities

JetBlue uses the term "Focus Cities" for locations that serve as the airline's major base of operations. Here, they promote the greatest connectivity and variety of destinations served.

JetBlue currently operates 6 focus cities throughout the network, which are (listed in order of size) New York-JFK, Boston, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, San Juan, and Los Angeles. The two northeast focus cities primarily serve transcontinental traffic and Europe flights, while Ft. 

Lauderdale, Orlando, and San Juan focus on Caribbean and South American service. The Los Angeles focus city, while currently being scaled down, sees service to all East Coast Focus Cities (although Orlando ends in October 2024) and smaller East Coast destinations such as Hartford, West Palm Beach, and Buffalo. 

These focus cities (except Orlando) also serve as the base of operations for all JetBlue flights that offer Mint, their premium lie-flat business class product. 

Most of these Mint flights are from JFK and BOS to the West Coast, Caribbean, and Europe, but FLL sees a decent share of transcontinental traffic with Mint service to LAX, SFO, LAS, and PHX. Los Angeles also offers a Mint flight to West Palm Beach, which is the only non-focus city destination LAX serves under the Mint brand.

Past and Future Destinations

As an air carrier does, JetBlue constantly evaluates its network and decides to open and close routes that will generate the airline the most money. Recently, a major announcement highlighted both station closures and new cities in which JetBlue will operate. 

Cities such as Raleigh, Minneapolis, San Antonio, Tallahassee, and Palm Springs will lose JetBlue service by the end of the year. However, JetBlue will open two new cities in the northeast, Islip, NY, and Manchester, NH, and boost frequencies on other northeast-to-Florida routes. 

Most of the cities JetBlue is closing saw dwindling service with no more than 1-2 daily flights by the time the station closure was announced, but MHT and ISP will each have up to 3 daily flights (all to Florida) when operations start, showing the company has a lot of hope for these new routes to be successful and work well into the existing route network of the growing airline. 

Summary

JetBlue's so-called "Bread and Butter" is undoubtedly its Northeast to Florida sector, the routes the airline was founded on. 

But since then they have expanded far and wide across the country and globe, with destinations across the West Coast of the United States, south down to the Caribbean and South America, and across the pond to Europe. 

They have truly become a global airline from their humble beginnings, and the future looks bright for them to expand even further.