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.