JetBlue Launches Service From LAX To Puerta Vallarta, Mexico

It’s always a party when an airline starts flying to a new destination. On June 15, JetBlue launched its inaugural service between Los Angeles, (LAX), and Puerto Vallarta, (PVR), a beautiful beach town on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. A New York to PV route returns in October.

Puerto Vallarta has long been a popular beach destination for the Hollywood crowd, where stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton came to frolic.

The JetBlue gate at LAX was festooned with balloons and decorations. Evey so often a gate worker would go up and proudly take pictures of their handiwork.

Passengers got a free cookie and a smile as they boarded. Pride Month was also reflected in the festive atmosphere.

Flight 1856 was packed with 162 passengers, even with Puerto Vallarta temperatures already a steamy 90. The cool Pacific, however, is a great place to cool off, snorkeling, surfing, sailing or even parasailing.

In August, a one-way ticket from LAX to Puerto Vallarta starts as low as $110. The Airbus A320 that launched the service lacked JetBlue’s popular Mint business class seating, but my coach seat was comfortable enough; JetBlue’s 32” seat pitch is among the roomiest in the airline industry.

JetBlue also lures today’s customers with “free and fast Fly-Fi broadband internet,” a rare and powerful perk. I got a jump on deleting emails before landing.

When that got tired, I watched M3GAN, the hit horror film featuring a killer doll, streaming for free on the video screen on the seatback in front of me.

On the other hand, the food and especially the drinks seemed expensive. An artisan cheese plate was $14, a ham and cheese croissant $12, and a kale salad $13. A Bud Light or Samuel Adams was $9, an airline bottle of Dewars or Bombay Sapphire $10, and Archer Roose Sauvignon Blanc or Malbec wine was $11. But part of the pitch for the Jet BlueCard was that onboard purchases are 50% off when using the card.

The JetBlue crew added some live entertainment with a game of onboard bingo. The crew drafted two boys, Max and Rodrigo, to put slips of paper in a hat. Numbered 1 through 27, they represented the rows on the Airbus. Little Rodrigo then rolled an improvised dice with letters A through F.

“You’re a winner, 3F!” big Rodrigo, the flight attendant, boomed. Winners won prizes from JetBlue promotional partners that included dinner on a pirate ship, a ziplining tour for two, the Barcelona tapas restaurant, and a guest stay at the comfy Marriott Puerta Vallarta Resort and Spa. To one lucky passenger the little boy said, “You’re a winner, baby.”

“The last two prizes are for the crew,” Rodrigo joked, before actually giving them to the last two rows. “That concludes our inflight bingo game, everyone else gets unlimited cheese and crackers,” he said to laughter and applause.

I didn’t win, but the game put a smile on my face. It’s a rare experience these days for a flight to actually be fun.

Two and a half hours later, our plane was met in Mexico with a mariachi band and smiling people proffering cool drinks and souvenirs of Nayarit Province. The local Tourism Trust expects that the new JetBlue route from Los Angeles will bring up to 4,860 tourists a month.

While this was only my second-ever new airline service experience (after the Avelo launch despite COVID-19 in 2021) such gate celebrations should be old hat for JetBlue. Since the Puerta Vallarta announcement, JetBlue said it will operate service between Los Angeles and 20 nonstop destinations, with more than 40 peak daily departures. This includes new Mint class service from LAX to Nassau, Bahamas (NAS.)

The airline is calling New York, Boston, Orlando, and Los Angeles its focus cities. Later this year, JetBlue will offer nonstop flights from New York’s JFK to St. Kitts and Nevis (SKB) and to Belize City, Belize (BZE.)

Other new flights include Boston Logan (BOS) to Grenada (GND. JetBlue is also offering service between Orlando (MCO) and Raleigh-Durham (RDU).

JetBlue now serves more than 100 destinations, quietly becoming an international airline. It has provided service to London from New York and Boston since 2021, and this year adds Paris and Amsterdam. While the Puerta Vallarta/Los Angeles route is new, it joins international JetBlue destinations like Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Bogota and Guatemala City.

Nonetheless, JetBlue is still the number six player in the U.S. airline market, with just a 5.5% share. American Airlines was the leading airline, with a domestic market share of 17.5 percent, closely followed by Delta Airlines, with 17.3 percent. Southwest followed with 16.9%, while United had 15.6%.

In other words, the Big Four had 67% of the market, followed by Alaska, with 6.2%, If JetBlue successfully merged with #7 Spirit, with 4.9%, it would give the airline over 10% of the market.

But the Biden Administration’s Justice Department sued in March to block the $3.8 billion JetBlue-Spirit merger, saying it would lead to higher prices for passengers A trial is set for October. In June, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren urged the Department of Transportation to “disregard” thousands of public comments on the merger. She alleged that they were solicited by JetBlue for a “mendacious astroturf campaign.”

In its quest to compete in an ever more concentrated industry, JetBlue partnered with American Airlines in the so-called Northeast Alliance. The alliance was meant to help the pair compete with giants United and Delta, by allowing “both airlines to offer and market each other’s seats on select routes, coordinate schedules, swap slots and gates,” according to Simple Flying.

However, the Biden Justice Department sued, and a judge agreed the combination was anticompetitive. He gave the companies 30 days to unwind it, which has been extended.

These diversions have hit JetBlue’s stock price, now just under $9 a share, as well. Wall Street seems to perceive JetBlue like Rodney Dangerfield; the $3 billion dollar carrier gets no respect.

Yet destination by destination, packed plane by plane, JetBlue is building an international business for itself.