JetBlue Airways raising number of flights from Boston to US cities and Caribbean by 30%; starts New York-St Lucia service

JetBlue Airways, the low-cost airline based in Forest Hills, New York, the United States, is expanding its services within the United States and to the Caribbean.

The airline will increase its service from Boston Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, by as much as 30% by the summer of 2010 – offering 78 daily flights to 33 destinations.

In a statement, JetBlue Airways said it will increase the number of flights to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic from 4 times a week to daily service; add a weekly flight to Montego Bay in Jamaica; and also launch its new service to Kingston, the capital city of Jamaica – which would be its 14^th international destination.

JetBlue Airways has already lunched its new non-stop flights between Saint Lucia, the island-nation in the eastern Caribbean Sea, and New York. The airline is operating flights between Hewanorra International Airport (Saint Lucia) and John F Kennedy International Airport (New York) every Monday, Thursday and Sunday – using the 150-seatAirbus A320 plane. Onward connections to and from other cities in the United States also are available.

JetBlue Airways has been serving Boston since 2004.

At present, JetBlue Airways, the No. 7 US-based carrier by traffic, operates non-stop flights out of Boston Logan International Airport than does any other airline.

The other cities in the United States to which JetBlue will operate additional services include Denver (Colorado), Baltimore (Maryland), and Fort Lauderdale (Florida).

The new services out of Boston will include 2 more flights to Chicago O’Hare International Airport and to Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina – making for a total of 3 daily flights each to Chicago and Raleigh-Durham.

JetBlue said it also will operate additional flights from Boston Logan International Airport to San Diego (California), San Francisco, and Washington.

Dave Clark, JetBlue Airways’ director of route planning, said in the statement that the additional fights from Boston Logan International Airport is a part of the airline’s long-term growth plan in Boston.

He said Boston is the fastest growing city among the 5 ‘focus cities’ of JetBlue Airways – the other 4 cities being Los Angeles, New York, Orlando (Florida), and Fort Lauderdale (Florida).

A majority of JetBlue Airways’ customers are vacationers, and leisure travel has stayed rather strong in the recent months, according to Dave Clark.

A new code-share pact between JetBlue Airways and Deutsche Lufthansa, the flag-carrier airline of Germany, will take effect by the end of the first week of November 2009.

The code-share agreement will give customers of JetBlue Airways in 12 cities in the United States the chance to book travel on Lufthansa to cities in Europe and beyond, via John F Kennedy International Airport in New York and Boston Logan International Airport.

Accordingly, JetBlue said in the statement, a passenger of JetBlue Airways in Buffalo (New York) can buy a one-stop trip from Buffalo to Frankfurt (Germany) via Boston – with JetBlue Airways providing the first leg of the journey, and Lufthansa providing the trans-Atlantic leg of the flight. This arrangement is expected to raise the number of JetBlue’s passengers who fly to Boston.