Even After Demise of Northeast Alliance, JetBlue Still Open to Partnership

JetBlue Airways remains open to establishing an airline partnership despite the dissolution of its Northeast Alliance with American Airlines last year.

JetBlue President Martin St. George, speaking Wednesday at the Barclays 42nd Annual Industrial Select Conference in Miami, said a potential partnership with another carrier is “something that’s attractive for us” and that “if we find a deal that’s accretive, we’ll absolutely do it.”

“If you look at the benefits we got from the partnership we had, I think that’s something that is attractive for us. We have said we are talking to multiple airlines, we’re still talking,” St. George said.

The Northeast Alliance was officially struck down in November 2024 by U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, a ruling that was upheld by a U.S. appeals court shortly after because of how it reduced competition between American and JetBlue. St. George said Wednesday that the ruling, despite ending the partnership with American, provided a framework for a new one in the future.

“If you read the ruling … he basically laid out a roadmap of what the partnership could look like,” he said.

For the airline and its customers, the biggest impact of a potential new partnership would be a boost to JetBlue’s TrueBlue loyalty program, which St. George said still struggles to compete with those of the “Big Three” U.S. airlines—American, Delta and United.

“I think the biggest benefit, in my view, is actually on the loyalty front. One of the things that we clearly hear from customers is the utility of TrueBlue points is not as strong as the utility of a point from the Big Three airlines,” he said. “I think the ability to bring that utility to TrueBlue would be fantastic.”

St. George also said that JetBlue has money allocated in its JetForward plan, a future roadmap the airline laid out for expansion in mid-2024, for a potential partnership, and could even add more if an opportunity presents itself.