JetBlue and Westjet receive Heathrow landing slots

Posted by Frank II (Freedonia) on 03/30/21 12:59 PM

JetBlue Airlines has received landing slots at Heathrow airport outside London. The Heathrow slots are earmarked 2/3 from JFK and 1/3 from Boston. They are scheduled for Terminal 2.

JetBlue had previously received a similar number of landing slots at Gatwick. The gave up their slots at Stansted.

While JetBlue has not made any announcements as to when they are planning to start flying to the UK, the landing slots start the week of August 2.

Westjet, that currently flies to Gatwick Airport, has received permission to fly two nonstop flights per day into Heathrow. One from Vancouver and one from Calgary. No date on when this service will begin.

Posted by Allan

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

03/30/21 01:45 PM

4584 posts

WestJet is my airline of choice and I was perfectly happy with them flying into Gatwick from Calgary. Here's hoping they're not switching to Heathrow only.

Posted by Cyn

Colorado Mountains, USA

03/31/21 04:42 AM

7937 posts

Frank II, just checking - at first, I thought your message about 2/3 and 1/3 was using some special airline or airport codes used to identify landing slots, and had no idea what those codes meant. Looking at it further, I’m guessing now that of “X” number of slots allotted to jetBlue, whatever the actual number, two thirds of that total are for JFK flights, and the remaining third is for the Boston route. Did I get it right the second time around?

And is the jetBlue/Heathrow deal so appealing that people from around the USA will be connecting at JFK or Boston. just to get in on it, or are those two markets the overwhelmingly prime source of their business, and New Yorkers and Bostonians alone are enough to fill up the planes?

Posted by Frank II OP

Freedonia

03/31/21 05:09 AM

16274 posts

Yes, 2/3 of the allocated flights are for JFK and 1/3 are for Boston. At least for now. Until JetBlue officially announces their service, we don't know.

Yes, JetBlue hopes to feed people from their network to their flights to Heathrow. They used to have an agreement with Icelandair where they would transport people from outlying cities to the airports used by Icelandair in the U.S.

What's the difference between taking say JetBlue to London via JFK and taking American to London via JFK? They may not be able to get people from the west coast but they could from places east of the Mississippi.

By the way, by far the busiest route across the Atlantic is between New York and London. Prior to Covid, there were 30 fights a day on that route. (That's each way.) JetBlue wants a piece of that.

Posted by Marco

Oxford, United Kingdom

04/01/21 02:30 PM

5456 posts

A third airline has acquired Heathrow slots - Bamboo Airlines for three weekly flights to Hanoi and three to Ho Chi Minh City. More may turn up over the next few weeks.

These are all running on temporary arrangements that allowed airlines to give up slots at Heathrow this summer on the guarantee that they would get them back next year if they wanted them. It is quite likely that many won't.

Posted by valadelphia

04/01/21 06:29 PM

4961 posts

I think I could almost endure JFK in order to fly JetBlue. I am eternally sad they discontinued route I used to fly regularly--they are vastly superior in comfort to any airline I've flow other than Virgin.