JetBlue’s lie-flat seats are coming to even more routes across a bigger chunk of its U.S. route map.
The airline will expand its “Mint” premium seating to seven additional cross-country routes, the carrier announced Tuesday. That will bring Mint to four JetBlue cities – Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, San Diego and Seattle – that don’t currently have it.
Tuesday’s news comes less than two weeks after JetBlue revealed another expansion of Mint, with the airline saying it would add the service on its Boston-Los Angeles route as well as on several Caribbean routes from its hubs at New York JFK and Boston.
That latest Mint expansion won’t begin until early 2017, but it will significantly grow the U.S. footprint of JetBlue’s Mint offering.
The effort comes as JetBlue increasingly tries to lure high-spending business travelers away from traditional carriers American, Delta and United.
Mint also helps differentiate JetBlue from Virgin America, which competes against JetBlue on several high-profile transcontinental routes. Virgin America -- which just announced plans to be acquired by Alaska Airlines -- is highly regarded for its distinctive Virgin brand of service, but it does not have a product to match JetBlue’s Mint lie-flat seats.
Like Virgin America, Alaska Airlines also competes against JetBlue on several transcontinental routes. Also like Virgin America, it does not offer lie-flat seats on any of its routes.
“Mint helped traditional business class travelers realize there is a better way,” JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes says in a statement. “Our plan has long called for strategic growth of Mint on these valuable transcontinental routes, and now is the right time for us to capture this opportunity to bring much needed competition where customers are facing dwindling choices.”
JetBlue said it would phase in Mint seats on the following routes from early 2017 into 2018:
- Fort Lauderdale- Los Angeles
- Fort Lauderdale-San Francisco
- Las Vegas-New York JFK
- San Diego-New York JFK
- San Diego-Boston
- Seattle-New York
- Seattle-Boston
JetBlue did not specify when Mint would go on sale on the new routes, saying only that it “will be available for purchase in the coming months.”
JetBlue’s Mint seats debuted in 2014 on its new Airbus A321 aircraft, giving the carrier premium seating for the first time. Mint passengers get seats that recline into lie-flat beds, upgraded food options and amenity kits.
Within the USA, JetBlue currently offers Mint on its flights linking New York JFK to Los Angeles and San Francisco and on flights between Boston and San Francisco. Mint will expand to JetBlue’s Boston-Los Angeles service this fall.
Elsewhere, JetBlue offers the service on several routes to the Caribbean from New York and Boston. Later this year, the carrier is set to add Mint to even more U.S.-Caribbean routes, where lie-flat seats are a rarity.
