Skift Take
Speaking to Skift, JetBlue president Marty St. George said it’s possible to balance a low-cost airline with high-end lounges. If realized as planned, these could be some of the most exclusive spaces of any U.S. carrier.
JetBlue will open its first airport lounge next year as part of a major premium drive. New York and Boston will be the first locations for the high-end facilities. The site at JFK Terminal 5 is due to open in late 2025, with Boston Logan’s Terminal C following soon after.
Asked by Skift why the airline has taken so long to open dedicated lounges, JetBlue president Marty St. George suggested that the commercial environment has changed. “We’ve always seen ourselves as a low-cost airline and we were questioning whether we could make the lounge business work.
“We’ve seen a model in the last four or five years where having a lounge tied to a credit card has turned into a very nice product line. We’ve come to a realization that we’re missing an opportunity to give better service to the most valued customers and to add to our profitability.”
Described as “unmistakably JetBlue,” the lounges will be designed with nods to the city while retaining the airline’s distinctive branding. The Boston facility will be the larger of the pair, at 11,000 square feet, while the JFK lounge will span 8,000 square feet. Both sites will be split into three areas that JetBlue is billing as Play, Work, and Lounge.
Combating Overcrowding Concerns
Entry will be tightly controlled. JetBlue acknowledged that overcrowding and long lines are common complaints at other airport lounges. To counter this, access will be “reserved primarily for its most loyal customers and premium credit cardmembers.”
Top-level members of its TrueBlue Mosaic program and transatlantic Mint customers will be eligible to access the sites. JetBlue will also launch a new premium credit card with partner Barclays that will have lounge entry as one of the biggest perks. Further details about the card are expected in the coming weeks.
Day passes will be available for buy, but only by “eligible customers” with ad-hoc access strictly based on availability. Notably, an annual pass will also be offered to “all customers.” It’s currently unclear what the terms or pricing will be.
No Access for Airline Partners
St. George confirmed to Skift that the lounges will not be available to guests of other airlines, even those that work with JetBlue.
“We do not have any plans to bring airline partners into the fold for this. We did our research with our customers about the desirability of these lounges, and the thing that we heard loud and clear was frustration with lines to get in, limited seating on the inside, and things like that. The most important thing for us is to make sure that we give the customers who get to experience the lounge a great experience.”
Asked if the lounges would be a high-profile loss leader, St. George insisted they would be a new source of profitability for the airline: “We would not be doing something like this if we did not see it as being P&L [profit and loss] positive for the company,” he said.
Could Florida be Next?
Away from its New York and Boston heartland, JetBlue has other hubs in Florida and the West Coast, however, St. George suggested these are not immediate priorities for new lounges. “My view is let’s see how New York and Boston do first. The markets we’ll be looking at [after JFK and Boston] are Fort Lauderdale and possibly Orlando.”
St. George acknowledged that even if the East Coast roll-out is successful, the project may not extend nationwide: “It is too soon to say if we will expand this work at all. There really is a step function as far as activity between Boston and New York and other places. We’ve between 140 and 180 flights a day from there and we’re closer to 60 at Fort Lauderdale,” he said.
In recent years JetBlue launched a transatlantic network, with services to European capitals including London, Paris, Edinburgh, and Dublin. Pressed on the lack of lounge access at London’s Heathrow Airport for its premium customers, St. George said the decision was a deliberate one for the business. “If we wanted a lounge experience at Heathrow, we could clearly do it. There are partners in our terminal that could grant lounge access to our customers – but it would also mean bringing up fares.
“We’ve done the math and talked to our customers about their elasticity in price and their interest in paying extra for the lounge and the numbers don’t pencil out. This is a very deliberate choice,” St. George added.
The changes are the latest phase of the airline’s broader ‘JetForward’ plan as the airline seeks to regain sustained profitability. In July, the company posted a surprise quarterly profit of $25 million as it seeks to revamp its strategy following the collapse of its merger with Spirit Airlines.
JetBlue CEO, Joanna Geraghty, will be speaking at the Skift Global Forum later on Thursday.
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