American Airlines and JetBlue have both made public comments supporting a desire to partner again after losing an antitrust trial over their ‘Northeast Alliance’.
The judge in that case was explicit: an arrangement like American Airlines has with Alaska Airlines would have passed muster. And with a new administration, it’s not clear whether an even more significant tie-up would have faced opposition.
Their previous partnership made both American and JetBlue relevant in the New York market to New York customers. It gave them plenty of flights with which to compete with Delta and United for customer loyalty. It let them deliver elite benefits across a full set of routes. It made them competitive for co-brand credit card spending as well.
JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty even went so far as to suggest that her airline was in talks to revise something like her partnership with American that hewed closely to the antitrust ruling. She wouldn’t confirm those talks were with American – though “it certainly could be with American.”
Unfortunately for New York customers of JetBlue and American Airlines, it looks like those talks are off – as reported by aviation watchdog JonNYC.
AA:
"Recent talks to partner with B6 have gone kaput, so AA is on its own in NY for foreseeable future"(AA related, not an official quote -from- AA)
— JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) April 28, 2025 at 5:09 PM
There has been talk of United Airlines doing a deal with JetBlue and speculation that its CEO Scott Kirby flattering of President Trump’s tariffs, and the airline donating $1 million to his inauguration, could be in hopes of winning antitrust approval for a deal that would bring United back into New York JFK and strengthen their position in Boston, at Washington National airport and Fort Lauderdale.
Without a partnership, American Airlines is left ‘too small to win, too big to walk away’ in the words of its former Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja. Government slot controls mean they cannot grow organically. They’re unable to generate the scale to offer enough service to keep New York customers loyal, which leaves them competing on price.
Before the JetBlue deal New York lost money for American for several years, based on their own accounting. With the JetBlue deal they saw increased AAdvantage program signups and credit card conversion, since they were newly relevant in the largest spend market in the country. There are no other game-changing options.
Sadly, instead of a viable New York strategy, American is left suing JetBlue for fees from the breakup of their partnership.
Oh well. It was nice when they had the partnership before, access to Admirals Clubs, etc., especially since B6 seems to not be capable of actually investing in its own lounges, even at JFK T5, which is long overdue for a proper lounge, especially with all the Mint flights based outta there. C’mon!
Somehow, someway, JetBlue needs to see if they buy Spirit before they Spirit goes under.
That would have been a great buy it. I never understood why Bidens Admin was so against it.
b6 actually IS investing in its own lounge out of JFK t5 now…
I know American is lagging behind, so I dont see why they dont just do a Hostile Takeover of b6. It can’t be that hard right now, and I imagine itll be even easier after their earings call tomorrow
The idiots at the AA wheel strike again.
This sounds unlikely to me as JetBlue’s routes to JFK will do little to fill UA seats leaving from EWR, and other than a few routes to LHR, CDG, AMS, they wouldn’t be gaining any long haul slots to add JFK capacity markedly.
I find the last sentence of the article puzzling – American needs a viable New York strategy, with or without JetBlue. They can’t just exit the market. Now that JetBlue is no longer available, maybe they can finally focus on coming up with a strategy to better utilize its gates and airport space in order to simply compete organically with Delta and United? Stuff like the Northeast Alliance, while beneficial for points people and some travelers, were just shortcut alternatives to actually competing.
@Rion — Do you have… BDS, as-in, #46 derangement syndrome, or something?
(Can’t resist since some of y’all can’t help but pretend to practice medicine and diagnose anyone who disagrees with you as some sort of mental patient.)
Technically, it was a federal judge that blocked that merger, because of concerns about monopolization, which may have been a ‘based’ decision (as the kids would say), or not.
They can try again. Recall that this regime only cares if you ‘bend the knee’ and ‘pay up’ with a lunch at Mar-a-Lago or whatever. They pay their ‘gratuity’ to the king, they can do as they wish!
B6 and AA just need to merge. Both are poorly run, basket-cases, and they each have something the other needs.
UA can have B6 if DL can have AA
@Tim Dunn — Deal! Let’s go!!
DL can run Latin America and DCA far better than AA and a massive return to DFW would certainly fix DL’s Texas problem just as a WN operation.
CLT gets bulldozed or reduced to a focus city at best which is all the airport is capable of handling.
One way or the other, Texas is just as much in play as JFK is for B6.
and DL pulls out of ORD except for a couple dozen local markets and leaves UA holding the bag for the entire ORD terminal rebuild.
@Tim Dunn — Wow! So many possibilities and greater efficiencies to be had! You had me at bulldozing CLT. Burn those rocking chairs, too!
Oof, and United sure would have it’s hands full at ORD. Other than T5, seriously 1-4 just needs a complete knock-down, restart. I mean, if we’re really doing a fascism here anyway, might as well use those emergency powers to rebuild these things correctly; it won’t be the autobahn, but, if we do it like the Chinese do, we could get this all complete in a matter of a couple years. No red tape. National emergency to fix ORD and CLT, for good! Bah!
Pardon, got a little excited here. One can dream!
AA just needs to use their slots more wisely and they should look into adding additional off hour slots.
I doubt people on red eyes would really care if it left at 10pm and landed before peek hours.
Then you could adjust flight like their Delhi one. It lands in Delhi at a horrible time where you can’t get any connections. They should move that so it lands closer to the morning so you can catch a connection.
With AA the largest US carrier, a merger with B6 does not make a lot of sense. Plus, dual hubs in MIA / FLL does not make a lot of sense. Maybe the lift at JFK and BOS would be worth it, but I have little faith in AA leadership’s ability to do anything other than ditch the plane like they did with the AA-US merger. As much as AA wants a viable NYC strategy I don’t see that happening unless the slot restrictions are lifted.
Also not sure was a B6-NK merger gets other than a carrier with good north-south east coast connectivity, but little beyond that. Would love to see UA take B6 or NK assets in FLL…but I doubt that’ll happen. UA does need a Florida / SE US solution…but FLL is not really it.
Agreed, why partner when Jetblue is insolvent and they would be better as a part of AA.
Alaska and JetBlue need to merge. Each is strong one opposite coasts and joining together would create a large enough airline to potentially compete effectively with the Big 3, which are already way too big. There’s no universe where handing even more power over U.S. aviation to Delta, United, or American works out well for passengers.The biggest problem with a Alaska-JetBlue merger I can see offhand is the Boeing/Airbus fleet dichotomy.