JetBlue Airways Corp. is eliminating flights from Long Beach Airport to Oakland and reducing flights out of Long Beach to Sacramento, San Jose and Las Vegas.
The changes take effect on April 29.
The Long Beach reductions affect a total of six flights and are part of a major flight service reorganization detailed by the airline in its Jan. 16 announcement.
The reorganization adds new JetBlue flight routes to Mexico and other U.S. destinations. To offset those additions, the New York-based airline said it is completely eliminating service at Oakland International Airport and reducing flights at Long Beach and several other airports that “are not meeting expectations.”
JetBlue’s companywide elimination of Oakland service includes the flights to and from Long Beach.
The airline also said it was reducing flight service from Long Beach to San Jose and Sacramento, but did not specify whether those reductions would result in fewer flights or eliminate the routes entirely.
The airline did say it was reducing the number of flights from Long Beach to Las Vegas to twice daily from the current three times per day.
This is the latest round of flight reductions JetBlue has implemented at Long Beach. The cutbacks were triggered when the city of Long Beach in late 2017 rejected an effort backed by JetBlue to establish an international customs facilities at the airport.
JetBlue had hoped to use the international service to launch flights to Mexico and turn the airport into its West Coast hub.
Several months later, JetBlue announced its first and largest round of flight cuts to date at Long Beach, relinquishing one-third of its flight slots at the airport.
The carrier now has 24 of the 41 slots at the airport. Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co. and Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. have picked up most of those former JetBlue slots.
Healthcare/biomed, energy, engineering/construction and infrastructure reporter Howard Fine can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @howardafine.
