The JetBlue Mint service map continues to grow. Today’s announcement will see Grenada added as a seasonal, Saturday-only service from 21 January 2017 to 29 April 2017, covering the peak Spring season in the market. Seats are on sale now, starting at $595 one way.
Adding additional, Saturday-only routes is not all that surprising. In many ways these are opportunistic moves to take advantage of slack in the transcon schedules for those aircraft on Saturdays. But the choice of Grenada is slightly surprising to me in that the route is not a daily service. JetBlue flies 4x weekly (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday & Sunday) and yet the company is still banking on there being enough premium passengers taking week-long trips to be able to sell the premium seats. Not wasting an opportunity to point out the cheaper fares (and lack of non-stop service for such on the competition, Dave Clark, vice president network planning at JetBlue, mentions in the statement announcing the service,
We are thrilled to introduce Mint to a fifth Caribbean route, where customers are paying too much for so-called premium service.
The lack of non-stop service, other than on JetBlue, is arguably more valuable than the hard product in the premium cabin. Flying on AA involves a 9pm arrival into Grenada while the Caribbean Airlines routing means either a 5 hour redeye on a 737 plus a connection in Trinidad or a long layover at Port of Spain in Trinidad. All of those options suck. Delta does offer Saturday-only nonstop service as well, at a similar price point to what JetBlue is running.
Read More: Mint-y fresh service, prices announced for new JetBlue routes
With several more Mint-configured A321s coming into the fleet starting in 2017 expect to see more routes like this. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Fort Lauderdale get in on the fun, too, for some Caribbean destinations on a seasonal basis.
Read More: JetBlue’s dramatic Mint expansion
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10 years from now…will Mint just be standard on every jetBlue flight?
Hard to fit it (in the current design) on the smaller planes and still make money. But more and more A321s are coming. Definitely will be more common than today.
B6 needs to publish thru-fares on Mint flights. Makes no sense to route via JFK (or BOS) and pay point-to-point fares.
Yes, I am a broken record on this issue!
Through-fares are filed in many cases. Not all, but the ones where the routing makes sense typically have them.
I guess their idea of “makes sense” and mine are completely different. Nothing at all out of any FL airport…
I think you’re correct that what “makes sense” differs. Flying from Florida to JFK/BOS to get to SFO/LAX doesn’t make sense to me at all. Doubling the trip duration rarely attracts premium pax.
But more rational routes like IAD-LAX are filed as through fares.