JetBlue to Open Airport Lounges in Major Premium Push

19.09.2024 - 13:33 / skift.com / Marty St George / Gordon Smith / St George

JetBlue will open its first airport lounge next year as part of a major premium drive. New York and Boston will be the first locations for the high-end facilities. The site at JFK Terminal 5 is due to open in late 2025, with Boston Logan’s Terminal C following soon after. 

Asked by Skift why the airline has taken so long to open dedicated lounges, JetBlue president Marty St. George suggested that the commercial environment has changed. “We’ve always seen ourselves as a low-cost airline and we were questioning whether we could make the lounge business work.

“We’ve seen a model in the last four or five years where having a lounge tied to a credit card has turned into a very nice product line. We’ve come to a realization that we’re missing an opportunity to give better service to the most valued customers and to add to our profitability.”

Described as “unmistakably JetBlue,” the lounges will be designed with nods to the city while retaining the airline’s distinctive branding. The Boston facility will be the larger of the pair, at 11,000 square feet, while the JFK lounge will span 8,000 square feet. Both sites will be split into three areas that JetBlue is billing as Play, Work, and Lounge.

Entry will be tightly controlled. JetBlue acknowledged that overcrowding and long lines are common complaints at other airport lounges. To counter this, access will be “reserved primarily for its most loyal customers and premium credit cardmembers.”

Top-level members of its TrueBlue Mosaic program and transatlantic Mint customers will be eligible to access the sites. JetBlue will also launch a new premium credit card with partner Barclays that will have lounge entry as one of the biggest perks. Further details about the card are expected in the coming weeks.

Day passes will be available for buy, but only by “eligible customers” with ad-hoc access strictly based on availability. Notably, an annual pass will also be offered to “all customers.” It’s currently unclear what the terms or pricing will be. 

St. George confirmed to Skift that the lounges will not be available to guests of other airlines, even those that work with JetBlue.

“We do not have any plans to bring airline partners into the fold for this. We did our research with our customers about the desirability of these lounges, and the thing that we heard loud and clear was frustration with lines to get in, limited seating on the inside, and things like that. The most important thing for us is to make sure that we give the customers who get to experience the lounge a great experience.”

Asked if the lounges would be a high-profile loss leader, St. George insisted they would be a new source of profitability for the airline: “We would not be doing something like