JetBlue Rolls the Dice, Adds Low-Cost Transatlantic Flight

With business travel near zero, and British citizens not allowed to visit the US unless it’s an emergency, adding a flight between New York and London could be a gamble. But it’s a route that usually earns an airline a lot of money, and JetBlue picked it up thanks to openings from other airlines scaling back flights, Bloomberg reports. If you’re a vacation traveler and not an airline business model nerd, the real news here is the flights are cheap. Some round-trip flights go for as little as $400 in economy or under $2,000 for the low-cost carrier’s surprisingly swanky Mint business class.

Travel writer Thomas Pallini wrote a review of a trip from London to New York in a Mint seat for Business Insider, and the closest he came to a complaint was that he had to lean over “more than I would’ve liked” to set up the in-flight entertainment. If JetBlue succeeds on the route, it will be because they’re using a smaller aircraft than the competition, making it easy to sell out a flight. And they’re adding more business-class tickets than they do on their short-haul flights, making the economy seats cheaper. Again, selling out the flight is a big part of the plan, the Economist reports. Plus, the smaller planes could be reassigned to other routes if New York to London doesn’t work out, per the Guardian. (More JetBlue stories.)