A JetBlue Airways aircraft lands close to the Air Site visitors Management tower on the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Worldwide Airport on Oct. 7, 2025 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Pictures
JetBlue Airways instructed CNBC on Wednesday that it’ll shut its flight attendant base at Newark Liberty Worldwide Airport in New Jersey and tech operations bases there and at LaGuardia Airport in New York this fall because it seeks to cut back prices and beef up service in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, although it famous that no workers will lose their jobs.
JetBlue mentioned it’s ending seasonal service between Newark and Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It mentioned workers might bid or switch to different bases.
“We’re working in a fast-changing panorama the place rivals are consistently including, decreasing and shifting flying in response to market situations,” JetBlue President Marty St. George and COO Warren Christie mentioned in a workers word, which was seen by CNBC. “Now we have to be simply as agile, coming into markets the place we see alternative and exiting those who not help our long-term objectives. Standing nonetheless whereas rivals make strikes is not an possibility.”
The airline is already the highest provider at Fort Lauderdale, although it was beforehand second to Spirit Airways, the South Florida-based discounter that collapsed on Might 2. Rivals have additionally added service to the area.
JetBlue earlier Wednesday mentioned it will increase day by day, cross-country flights with its lie-flat enterprise class, Mint, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to San Diego on Nov. 19 and can add extra Mint-equipped flights this winter to San Francisco and Los Angeles.
That may embrace as much as eight day by day Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles flights and three a day to San Francisco.
JetBlue has spent years trimming unprofitable routes and slicing prices to return to regular profitability. Its final worthwhile quarter was two years in the past, and the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Worldwide Airport push is a giant a part of its technique, St. George instructed CNBC earlier this month. The airline is scouting house for a high-end airport lounge there, too, he mentioned.
Mint-equipped planes are profitable and people seats carry a giant premium. A one-way Mint seat from Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles on Jan. 10 topped $3,000 and went as excessive as $4,522 whereas a primary coach ticket on that route was going for as little as $244.
The JetBlue executives instructed workers Wednesday that they know the Newark reductions increase questions on their plans at LaGuardia Airport, the place JetBlue’s one-time acquisition goal, Spirit, operated out of the Marine Air Terminal till it shut down.
“Any future alternatives that might come from the LGA slot public sale course of stay unsure and would take time to develop,” they mentioned. “We should make choices primarily based on the operation we all know we’ll fly, not on potential outcomes that will or might not materialize sooner or later.”
JetBlue executives have known as out the excessive prices of working at airports like LaGuardia.
“We’re a lot, a lot smaller at LaGuardia than we had been 4 years in the past as a result of it is a $40 [enplanement fee] airport for us. And the fountain is absolutely fairly, however … I feel folks would slightly have low fares than a very nice fountain,” St. George mentioned at a JPMorgan trade convention in March, referring to the 25-foot-tall water characteristic within the airport’s Terminal B.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates LaGuardia and Newark airports, didn’t instantly remark.
