point fu

UPDATE: they've officially announced the A321-LR with London as the destination starting in 2021 ! As I expected, details are scant. Seth Miller has a live Twitter feed with lots of good images and quotes. All the travel blogosphere has been waiting for JetBlue's "big announcement" today. While there was no official word from JetBlue about the topic of the announcement, they cheekily included a London Underground seat fabric pattern in the background to drive heaps of speculation that it's about new transatlantic service. They've been teasing this for years , and this really does seem like the "put up or shut up" moment for it. While the announcement won't happen for a few more hours , their cakemaker's Instagram post seems to indicate London and Paris are the first destinations. While a lot of folks have dreamed of having a new and exciting ( and hopefully more valuable ) way to redeem their fixed-value TrueBlue points, JetBlue...

(Last updated Oct 2018)   When JetBlue announced their new lie-flet First Class " Mint " service, I was lucky enough to snag a seat at the special introductory fare of $499 ( one way ). I've updated this page over the ensuing months to keep the review current .  PROS:  Best transcon seat hands-down Half the price of any competitor Free, fast WiFi and live TV Delicious, innovative food CONS:  Entire plane boards through forward doors so pre-departure time is chaotic No lounge (unless you have Priority Pass) JetBlue's rewards program has limited redemption options Conclusion   if you're paying for your own ticket, this is unquestionably the best way between NYC and LAX or SFO (or their new cities ) in style and comfort.     Background First, a quick primer: for years Delta, American, and United have flown special planes on the NYC-Los Angeles and the NYC-San Francisco routes. They're configured like international plane...

UPDATE ( Nov 2016 ): Delta announced that they'll also be adding lie-flat seats to their NYC – San Diego, and Boston – San Francisco routes! Hooray for competition!  As I've said before, I'm a huge fan of JetBlue's "Mint" First Class product (trip reports here , here , and here ) It's hands-down the best domestic seat, food, and service in First Class. I'd even go so far to say that Mint, except for its lack of lounge access, is actually superior to the Big 3's (United, Delta, American) international Business Class offerings. After the big excitement last week where JetBlue and Alaska were bidding for Virgin America, I wasn't sure what to expect from them once it became clear Alaska was willing to pay any price (and did) to win. Well, they  announced some big news today  – Mint is expanding to a bunch of new markets! I've mentioned before that they expanded beyond the traditional premium domestic market of LAX/SFO/JRK and added Bo...

I'm a big fan of JetBlue's new "Mint" Business Class service. I wrote about it right after launch , and again six months into service. I've flown it several times since then and thought I'd share a few more observations from my flight this week (one year after my last post on the subject). I'm happy to report it's mostly unchanged :) first and foremost the seat is still the best in the business the staff are all incredibly helpful and professional the food is fantastic and modern fares are still super reasonable and much cheaper than the competition (from $600 each way) fares on the "big 3" are still $1000 cheaper than they were before Mint launched they still need a lounge in LAX, but i think the lack of one is reflected in the price (the gate situation at JFK and SFO is so much nicer than LAX you don't really miss the lounge there, I can't speak for BOS) it's still pretty easy to make Mosaic status. Mosaic + a J...

Despite the PR nightmare of United's recent dragging and beating episode , United is on track to have a great quarter, and they'll likely have their highest number of boardings ever. Despite all of those Facebook comment threats about "never flying them again", it's amazing how many people still do when it's the cheapest, most-convenient, or only option. People might still hate United, but not enough to pay $50 more or take a 2-stop itinerary instead of a direct one ... This is why competition is so important. I still don't understand why the Obama administration approved the three mergers that eliminated Continental, US Air, and Virgin America. The airlines have now fully recovered from their post-9/11 financial crises, are making record profits, and yet they're raising prices, introducing "Basic Economy" fares with even fewer amenities, and treating customers worse than ever . As we drift toward monopoly, this is exactly what we'd pre...

( updated March 2017 ) As I mentioned before , my husband and I both gave up on United and on chasing status with "the big 3" a couple years ago. Since he flies NYC-SFO a lot for work, he ended up settling into a pattern of flying JetBlue Mint since it's hands-down the best domestic Business Class and is often the cheapest (his employer requires him to fly on the lowest-priced flight within $100). Since we both fly quite a bit, we decided to do take advantage of JetBlue's unique-in-the-US family point-pooling program. The big advantage of a Family Pool is that you can avoid the situation where, for example, two of you want to go somewhere and you need 30,000 miles each, but one of you has 45,000 miles and the other only has 15,000. (Most airlines won't let you transfer miles between accounts without a hefty fee). Another big advantage of Family Pooling is that it's easier to redeem for a single ticket that includes multiple family members. During ...

JetBlue has a fixed-value rewards program called TrueBlue, where points are earned based on the cost of the flight and redeemed at a fairly fixed rate based on the current price for the flight. While these types of programs don't let you take amazing 10-cents-per-point aspirational reward flights like our ANA First flight, they do mean that you can easily redeem your points for any seat on any flight without hours of planning and searching for the ever-elusive award seat. Most of the bloggers value JetBlue points at 1.3¢ each . In my own observations, there's been a little bit of variability over the years: I've seen the occasional redemption at 1.4¢ or even as high as 1.7¢. Well, yesterday I was pricing out a one way Mint flight from SFO to JFK and noticed that my Mint flight has reached an all-new low: 1.0¢ .  While it's easy to think, "it's only 7/10th of a cent", that actually represents a 40% devaluation from the rates we were routine...

I'm a big fan of JetBlue Mint. I've posted about it quite a few times . To quote myself: I love how JetBlue absolutely hit the correct note with their Saxon + Parole menu in Mint. People flying in Business Class on the JFK/LAX/SFO aren't likely to get excited about the standard "Beef, Chicken, or Pasta" offering, yet the big 3 legacy carriers keep serving midwestern cafeteria food on fine china to people who have much more sophisticated palettes. Well I suppose it's no surprise that not everyone likes interesting food, but I only just learned that JetBlue has a "secret menu" (called "Plane Eats") for the picky eaters among us. JetBlue Mint's "Secret Menu" From everything I've read you need to pre-arrange this at least 48 hours before your flight. (Click here and scroll down to Special Meal Menus). A direct link to the menu is here . There are other options there as well: Low cal, Vegan, Kosher, and Gluten-Free...

I don't usually do a trip report for a domestic Economy flight, but I wanted to make a couple of quick notes about our recent flight between New York (JFK) and Portland, Oregon (PDX). The plane leaves NYC in the early evening, flies direct to Portland then turns around and comes back as a redeye. We took advantage of my husband's Mosaic status to upgrade to Even More Space for 800 JetBlue points per leg. Our September flight to Seattle was nearly identical.  The old Airbus A320 had no at-seat power, but it did have fast, free Wi-Fi. According to this post , only 31 of their 230 planes have at-seat power in regular Economy Class seats (the planes with Mint First Class cabins) Hot/fresh food for purchase in Economy is available  only  on Mint planes. A snack box it is… Regular Economy seats on JetBlue have as much legroom (34") as United/Delta/AA have in their Economy Plus cabins.  JetBlue's Even More Space option gives you 38" – as much as most domestic Fi...

Per this link , it looks like JetBlue is going to be expanding the network for their new Mint First Class product. It's unquestionably the best First Class product for USA domestic flights and now they're expanding it to the Caribbean. UPDATE 4/2016: They've announced yet another expansion! UPDATE 7/2018: They're adding mint to St Maarten, St Lucia, and Libera My trip reports for Mint are here  and here . Closing-door individual suites

United recently announced that it was moving all of its PS (Premium Service) lie-flat First Class service to Newark. Seemingly in response to that news, today JetBlue announced that they would add several additional flights between JFK and LAX/SFO. I'm a big fan of Mint ( my reviews here , and here ) and I'm happy that expanded service means more flight times and more chances to snag the $599 seats.  The other big news is that they've announced Mint service between Boston and SFO/LAX! Delta used to have their premium service planes on this and the JFK-SEA runs but both services have been discontinued. Hopefully they'll do $499 promo flights for the launch like they did with LA. Boston is a much smaller market than NYC but hopefully they can make it successful and spread it to other destinations (I'd love Mint on the JFK-SEA run!). Hooray for lie-flat seats and closing door suites! More information here .

As I said in the post yesterday , status is best earned when someone else is paying. Well, my hubby's most-recent work flight on JetBlue Mint posted this morning and he crossed the threshold into JetBlue " Mosaic " elite status. While he's United gold until Feb 2016, he left them for JetBlue at the start of 2015 (more information on why he left United here ). The other big development driving his move is that his company changed their rules and started paying for Business Class for transcontinental red-eye flights. Since policy also requires him to pick a flight within $100 of the lowest fare offered, Mint is almost always going to be his only choice. JetBlue's loyalty program is entirely revenue-based, so you earn status based mostly on how much you spend. Likewise you redeem points for a fixed amount of money (≈1.4¢ each). The Mosaic benefits are covered here , but I think the most exciting one is that  you immediately get 15,000 bonus points (a $210 value...

If you look at item 1 at the bottom of this page , you'll see the power of a single footnote. Premier members who request a MileagePlus Upgrade Award on or after February 1, 2015, for a p.s. route between New York JFK and Los Angeles or San Francisco will no longer be exempt from the co-pay. For several years now, my husband's work has paid for his JFK< >SFO flights in Economy and he upgrades those flights to United P.S. BusinessFirst with miles out of his personal account. One of the things he's really liked about post-merger United is that doing this is a piece of cake — no need to call customer service, just tap a few buttons on the website and it all happens automatically.  But now, his upgrade to BusinessFirst is going to cost him 40,000 of his own miles plus $500 of his own dollars on top of whatever his company paid. While United miles are probably the most valuable of the US carriers, he essentially runs a deficit — he spends way more miles upgrading ...

Two large hedge funds that own around 7% of United Airlines stock are leading a revolt to force United to replace their board of directors. United and Continental merged several years ago and they want Continental's former CEO, Gordon Bethune, named non-executive Chairman of the Board. Bethune is regarded as a the savior of Continental a decade ago and they want him back, I think, to undo the damage that United's CEO Jeff Smisek did in the years after the merger. These Pumas were made for walkin... (my final United PS flight two years ago) My husband and I were longtime United frequent fliers but several things turned us away: The merger between United and Continental was an IT nightmare. While they might have some industry-leading IT capabilities now, their website was plagued with bugs for years and it looked and worked like a clunky 1997 website for 4+ years after the merger.  Smisek talked a lot about upgrading the planes but they were so slow at rolling out W...

As I mentioned earlier this year , JetBlue ran both a status challenge and status match promotion where you could quickly earn elite status with them. My husband already has Mosaic status, but unfortunately he was not on-track to make it again for next year. He was about to book an expensive Mint flight to California for work and realized that flight would earn enough points to qualify for him the status challenge. Well this email showed up last week... Mosaic! and along with it came the 15,000 bonus points (worth $210) that you get when you qualify for Mosaic the normal way . I mention this because in several online forums many were wondering if people doing the challenge would receive this bonus. On top of that, this was apparently his 10th Mint flight so he got an additional 1,000 points for the "Never a Dull Mo-Mint" badge as well. Double bonuses! My post about the actual value of Mosaic status is here .