Where will Jet Blue fly to in London

Jet Blue recently announced that they will commence transatlantic flights to London in the coming years, making it their first transatlantic destination. Their aim for this is to break into what they call the saturated New York to London market, which currently has flights from 6 separate carriers on it and is one of the busiest and profitable international flights in the world. As well as New York they also intend to fly to London from Boston. To serve this route they will use an A321LR which will soon be delivered to them. However what they have not yet announced on this route is what London airport they will serve, which is what I will try and look into bellow and decide which of the London airports is most likely to be used initially for Jet Blue. 

London Heathrow

 Being the largest of the London airports this would be the most obvious choice for Jet Blue to serve. However it is definitely not that simple. Heathrow is currently at capacity and therefore for Jet Blue to be able to operate into London they would have to spend a large amount of money buying slots off another carrier, something they may not wish to do on such a new venture for the company. Furthermore if they were able to attain slots they probably would not be at peak times, something which might make breaking in on this route and in addition to this in order to offset the cost of slots tickets on this route would have to be more expensive, which from what I have heard is not one of Jet Blue's aims on this route. Finally at the time of writing every flight on London to New York and Boston route is served by Heathrow with the exception of one of British Airways flights as well as those operated by Norwegian, therefore if Jet Blue wanted to stand out from the competition, Heathrow would not be the place to do it. However it is not impossible for Jet Blue to decide on Heathrow. Out of all the London airports Heathrow is the best connected to London. Furthermore with the expansion of Heathrow in the next few years, it might come at the right time for Jet Blue to be considering ramping up their London operations significantly which might tempt them a little bit more.

 

London Gatwick

 Up until a few weeks ago I would have been almost certain that Jet Blue would have been served by Jet Blue. However the thing that has changed this view for me is Delta announcing that they are going to serve Gatwick from both Boston and New York. The reason I was so sure it was going to be Gatwick was that the one key piece in my opinion that Gatwick was missing from their route map was one of the leading North American carriers. Whilst they do have multiple connections to North America through West Jet, Norwegian and Air Transat amounts others, none of them I would say offer the large scale North American network that one of the leading full service carriers offer. However with the introduction of flights from Delta this is a need I feel that they have fulfilled. This is not to say however that I feel that Gatwick is now out of the running. Gatwick is still an airport looking to expand and Jet Blue would definitely fulfil this need. Furthermore Gatwick has in recent years been used as a safe airport to expand long haul operations into, with fellow North American carriers WestJet and Air Canada route in recent years using Gatwick to operate their first British operations into. In addition to this I would also say that the lower cost of operations of Gatwick would also allows Jet Blue to offer significantly lower ticket prices than their opposition. 

Stansted

 Londons third airport currently doesn’t have any transatlantic operators flying from it but this doesn’t mean that Jet Blue couldn’t be the first. Stansted has also managed to attract another Long Haul customer recently in Emirates, who have just added a second daily flight on the 777-300ER which suggests that there is definitely demand from this airport for Long Haul flights and I would also say that Jet Blue’s operations to the Americas would definitely compliment Emirates services to the east. However what might put Jet Blue off is Stansted's lack in experience of operating longer range flights, especially as this would be their first destination, as well as the fact that Stansted hasn’t yet managed to attract many premium airlines, which might be a problem for Jet Blues attempts to compete in the Business class cabin. 

Luton

 Despite being the smallest of the airports on this list I still feel that Luton might have a shot. The things going Luton’s way is that unlike Stansted, they have recent experience of transatlantic operations being the airport of choice when La Companie launched operations from London to New York, which also shows that they have the ability to win the support of airlines new to the London market seeking to serve long haul routes. Furthermore I would argue that out of the airports on this list, Luton has the best road connections to the rest of the UK, which might be of advantage to Jet Blue if they seek to gain passengers from across Britain rather than just focusing on London. However the problems that Luton has are the same as those with Stansted, in addition to the fact that Luton currently is not served by any long haul airlines.

So in conclusion where do I think that Jet Blue will fly to in London. To be perfectly honest I wouldn’t be too surprised if it was any of these airports, however if I had to narrow it down I would guess that it was between Gatwick and Stansted, with Gatwick probably a little bit in front at the moment.