JetBlue will pull out of Long Beach Airport and consolidate its Los Angeles-area operations in
LAX.
The carrier’s last flights out of Long Beach will depart
Oct. 6.
Beginning Oct. 7, JetBlue routes from Long Beach to Austin,
Reno, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle and Bozeman, Mont., will
shift to LAX. The carrier will drop rather than transition its service from Long
Beach to Portland, Ore.
With the move, JetBlue will operate more than 30 daily
flights to 13 destinations from LAX. The transition is the beginning of a
strategic expansion for JetBlue at LAX over the next five years. JetBlue plans
to be offering approximately 70 daily departures from the airport by 2025, including flights to multiple new domestic and international markets,
some of which have never before been served by the airport.
“The transition to LAX, serving as the anchor of our focus
city strategy on the West Coast, sets JetBlue up for success in Southern
California. We continue to seize on opportunities to emerge from this pandemic
a stronger competitive force in the industry,” said head of revenue and
planning Scott Laurence.
JetBlue was once the largest operator at
capacity-constrained Long Beach. But the carrier has shed landing rights to
Delta and Southwest over the past couple years. As of April, Southwest and
JetBlue each held 17 daily landing slots at the airport, according to the Long
Beach Post.
JetBlue said it would continue to fly from the Los Angeles-area
airports of Ontario and Burbank.