JetBlue Gains Permanent Heathrow Slot, Adds New Flight to Gatwick, and Enhances Ground Experience
JetBlue now offers Fast Track at London Heathrow.
JetBlue Airways announced Monday it had secured permanent take-off and landing slots at London’s Heathrow Airport and that it planned to add an additional flight from New York to London Gatwick Airport.
Access to the airline’s permanent slots goes into effect on October 29, 2022.
“The U.S. – U.K. air corridor is among the busiest in the world and to effectively compete JetBlue is adding more flights across the North Atlantic, growing from just one daily flight last summer to five by this fall,” said the airline’s CEO, Robin Hayes, in a statement.
Hayes said that, with the new permanent slots, the airline is now “positioned to provide long-term service at one of the busiest airports in the world.”
Once the airline begins to operate using its permanent slot at Heathrow, it will begin to offer a second non-stop flight between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and London Gatwick Airport, bringing the number of daily flights between London and New York to three.
JetBlue will also begin to offer Fast Track expedited airport security checkpoint access to passengers flying in its Mint business-class cabin as well as to Mosaic-level customers and those traveling with Mosaic passengers on the same reservation. It will also be available to those traveling on a Blue Extra fare and those who have an Even More Space seat.
The airline operates its transatlantic flights using its new fleet of Airbus A321LR, or Long Range, aircraft.
JetBlue’s A321LR jetliners feature the airline’s newest iteration of its Mint business-class cabin. It features 24 suites, each with a sliding door, with seats designed by Tuft & Needle, a mattress and bedding company owned by Serta Simmons Bedding.
In addition to the new suites, there are several Mint Studios, a seat that it says offers the most space of any premium seat offered by a U.S. airline. Each aircraft equipped with a Mint cabin will have two Mint Studios in the front row. The Mint Studio includes a 22” seatback screen, an extra side table, and a guest seat that can accommodate a visitor from another Mint seat during the flight. The Mint Studio also will offer the largest lie-flat bed of any U.S. carrier, the airlines said.
Meanwhile, each Mint passenger will receive a blanket with a built-in foot pocket, a memory foam-lined pillow, and an amenity kit with eye mask and earplugs.
The suites will offer flannel-covered privacy dividers, concrete lampshades, and woodgrain table patterns. The seats themselves are covered with imitation leather. Each suite has gradient lighting panels and the cabin has a new type of mood lighting, although the airline didn’t offer specifics on this.
The coach cabin, which the airline will call “core,” will feature seats that are 18.4” in width, among the widest in the industry in coach, and have a minimum seat pitch of 32”. There will be four rows of the airline’s premium economy lite section, Even More Space, with up to 6” more in seat pitch.
The seats feature an imitation leather product the airline calls “ultraleather,” and all seats have adjustable headrests, power outlets, and USB ports for charging, as well as a water bottle holder and several mesh pockets in the seat-back area. The aircraft’s cabin walls have been redesigned to give those in the window seat more space.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
