JetBlue and United aim to take flight together with Blue Sky partnership

Travel Weekly

2 days ago

United and JetBlue will become partners. And United will be returning to New York JFK.
Under an agreement announced Thursday, the two carriers will offer reciprocal loyalty point accrual and redemption, as well as reciprocal loyalty status privileges, such as early boarding, upgrades and free bags.
Flyers will also be able to book United flights through JetBlue channels and vice versa.
And JetBlue will trade arrival and departure trade slots at capacity-constrained JFK to United in exchange for increased access at Newark. United expects to begin flying up to seven daily roundtrips out of JFK in 2027, ending a hiatus that began in 2015, when United moved its entire New York metroplex long-haul operation to Newark. JetBlue expects to gain eight additional daily flights at Newark.
The carriers have not announced a launch date for the partnership, which they are calling Blue Sky, but said some components could begin as soon as the fall.
The tie-up, which had been widely anticipated by airline industry insiders, will give JetBlue customers access to more than 200 additional destinations around the globe, the airlines said. JetBlue has been struggling to achieve sustainable profitability in recent years, and they hope the United partnership helps turn the tide. The partnership will replace, on a more limited basis, JetBlue's brief Northeast Alliance with American Airlines in Boston and the New York area, which was blocked by antitrust regulators at the Justice Department in 2023.
Along with offering United its sought-after re-entry into JFK, the partnership will give United customers access to JetBlue's network of approximately 180 daily JFK flights and approximately 130 Boston flights, including JetBlue's extensive Caribbean network.
Importantly, and in a clear effort to avoid running afoul of antitrust regulators, the arrangement doesn't involve codesharing. Instead, the carriers will rely on an interline agreement for cross-airline traffic, meaning United and JetBlue will continue to publish and market flights separately under their own brand and flight numbers. There will be no revenue sharing or joint scheduling.
In the ruling that ended the JetBlue-American Northeast Alliance, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin objected to the breadth of that alliance, which included codesharing, extensive revenue sharing and joint scheduling of most flights out of New York and Boston. Sorokin also said that a more limited partnership might have been allowable.
Regulators, nevertheless, will have reason to review the United-JetBlue partnership for competitive concerns. United flew the most combined seats out of the New York area in 2024 ,and JetBlue flew the third most, Cirium flight schedule data shows.
Along with interlining and reciprocal loyalty and booking, the Blue Sky partnership will impact United's holiday package offering. United, which currently sends customers to a hodgepodge of different websites to book car rentals, cruises, hotels and vacation packages, will begin using the more sophisticated Paisley platform that JetBlue has built for its package offerings.
Paisley technology will enable United to keep its package offerings within the United.com website and app, and to better integrate those offerings with the Mileage Plus program while enhancing customer service, the airline said.
The partnership will touch upon both airlines' corporate travel programs. The carriers will continue to manage their corporate programs independently, but they'll have the ability to extend the terms of their corporate programs to flights operated by the other airline.
"This includes the discounts each airline has independently negotiated," the airlines said.