JetBlue “very confident” that Amsterdam is there to stay |

JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes is “very confident” that his airline will get slots for the 2024 summer season at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The US carrier has only guaranteed slots for the remainder of this summer season and the upcoming winter season through late March but hopes to keep Amsterdam on the schedule after that. JetBlue operated its first service from New York to Amsterdam today. AirInsight was there to welcome the flight. Hayes and other JetBlue management were among the passengers of the full flight B6 2288 that departed New York JFK on Tuesday at 8.40 pm local time and landed at Schiphol at 9.15 am local time after a 6 hour 35 minutes flight. At the request of the airline, there was no water salute, but the rain showers made up for that. The return flight B6 2289 departed Schiphol at 1.35 pm each day, which is operated by the Airbus A321LR with 24 Mint suites and 114 Core/Economy seats. Wednesday’s return flight used sustainable aviation fuel purchased from AirBP. Schedule times were different on subsequent days, with JFK departures around 10.00 pm but Schiphol departures unchanged at 1.35 pm. Amsterdam is the third city in Europe served by JetBlue after it started services to London Heathrow in August 2021, followed a little later by flights to London Gatwick. The London schedule now includes two daily flights between JFK and Heathrow, one between JFK and Gatwick, plus one daily flight between Boston and Heathrow and Gatwick. Exactly a month ago, the carrier launched a daily service between New York JFK and Paris Charles de Gaulle and will add one from/to Boston in the near future. Both London and Paris are doing very well. Bucket list JetBlue has had just five months to prepare for the Amsterdam service. Schiphol has been on the airline’s bucket list since the carrier announced its first transatlantic plans in 2019. However, the airline was consistently denied slots by Dutch slot coordinator ACNL on the reasons of a lack of capacity. Last year, JetBlue launched a procedure with the US Department of Transportation to file a complaint with the Dutch government, to be followed by a lawsuit. Tulips from Amsterdam: Robin Hayes and Schiphol CEO Ruud Sondag exchange gifts. The vase has the shape of The Netherlands. (Richard Schuurman) Then last March, ACNL did grant slots, but only for the current summer season initially at a very unfavorable schedule with a mid-afternoon arrival in Amsterdam. This was later tweaked to an early morning arrival, while JetBlue was also granted slots for the winter season from late October to late March. In early June, JetBlue dropped its case with the DOT and planned a lawsuit as this would require too much time and resources from the Department. ACNL made it very clear to JetBlue that it has no certainty of securing slots for the next summer season. And while the current summer season is almost getting to an end, Hayes said that he was very keen to start operations in Amsterdam this summer despite the short time for preparations. It will add Boston-Amsterdam to the schedule on September 20. “We have a very significant presence in New York and Boston. When we looked at some of the largest markets that we don’t fly to, Europe is the answer to that. We want to add some key markets in Europe to our network so that we can serve the needs of our customers who want to fly for leisure or business. It helps you build your frequent flyer program and other things. Simply, behind London and Paris, Amsterdam is one of the most important markets in Europe,” said Hayes during a media round table at Schiphol this morning. “About your question on slots: yes, we do have historic slot rights for the winter and we don’t have that yet for the summer, but it is something we are working extremely hard on. Mind you JetBlue is a disruptor. We are trying to elbow ourselves into airports that for years have suffered from a lack of competition and where legacy airlines have taken a very dominant position. So you have to be willing to take a chance.” While the situation at Amsterdam isn’t clear, JetBlue knows all about how difficult it is to get slots when looking at London Heathrow, Hayes said: “Heathrow is another airport that is very constrained, and yet we have three flights a day, which I think no one thought was going to be possible. We are here, there is a lot of delight we are here. People see us as a great force for competition and we will be working very hard to make sure we can stay here.” Hoping for a long relationship One of the people who showed delight at JetBlue’s arrival is Schiphol CEO Ruud Sondag, who cut the ribbon and the strawberry cake with Robin Hayes and exchanged friendly words and a few gifts. “But as we are Dutch, we only do it for this ceremony with taxpayers’ money for this flight and not again for the flight from Boston. That’s our kind of Dutch Treat,” Sondag was teasing Hayes. JetBlue operates the Airbus A321LR to Amsterdam. (Richard Schuurman) Sondag said in his welcoming words to Hayes that he hoped to build a long relationship with JetBlue at Schiphol. He wasn’t willing to discuss the slot situation with the media, but a member of the airport’s management said that slots for the next summer season and beyond are a decision taken only by coordinator ACNL. Schiphol has no influence on this. Time is running short, as the capacity for the 2024 summer schedule will be decided on September 26. Only then, the airport will know which airlines have the right to operate. Committed to competition Hayes is of the view that new entrants should not be prohibited from entering new markets. “We are here now. Is it really viable for JetBlue in four or five months’ time not to be here next summer? I think that is going to be a very challenging situation for people to understand. The US DOT is very committed to competition and to no access to markets. We as a US carrier don’t want to be treated differently than anybody else. So we are here and there is no reason why we can’t be given slots next summer,” the JetBlue boss said. In its June 5 letter to the DOT, in which JetBlue announced it wished to withdraw the complaint case against the Dutch state, the company also issued a warning. The withdrawal is “without prejudice to its ability to seek future Department intervention under the IATFCPA, should the Dutch Government impose an unjustifiable or unreasonable restriction on JetBlue’s continued access to AMS for the Summer 2024 season and beyond.” But even if it maintains its 2024 slots, the long-term future at Schiphol is uncertain as the Dutch government intends to cut capacity at the airport to 440.000 movements by November 2024. This situation has been discussed in a court case (supported by JetBlue) and appeal, which the state won in June. Since then, the government has resigned and no decisions will be made until after the November elections and the formation of a new government, which could take many months into 2024. JetBlue is committed, Hayes said: “We wouldn’t make all these investments if we weren’t extremely confident that we would be here next summer. We want to stay and we want to bring an all-year-round service because people flying out of Schiphol have very little choice of the northeast of the US. There is a very large, legacy high-fares joint venture (Hayes means Air France-KLM and Delta Air Lines) that covers pretty much every flight into the northeast. JetBlue brings welcome competition, so not allowing us to continue here would be a significant step back.” He added that the US-Dutch Open Skies agreement was the first of its kind and has set standards for competition. A321XLR on a diet JetBlue is keen to grow its transatlantic network in the future, but its plans are curtailed by delivery delays of more A321LRs. Just took delivery of the eight aircraft and hopes to add another three this year to grow the fleet to eleven. More will be coming next year. While the range of the -LRs is needed for the services to Paris and Amsterdam, it can operate five A321neo’s certified with ETOPS between Boston and London, which gives it some flexibility. It's blue inside JetBlue's A321LR. To protect the range of the A321XLR, Robin Hayes says that weight needs to be shaved from the interior. (Richard Schuurman) Once it takes delivery of the thirteen A321XLRs on order, it brings what Hayes calls “mid-haul Europe” into play and enables the airline to fly a little bit further East into Europe. But JetBlue also wants to enter the Spanish market with the -XLR. Hayes expects the -XLRs to come in slightly heavier due to the additional safety requirements around the Rear Center Tank, “but it is not that material.” To maintain the aircraft’s unique range of 4.700nm/8.700 kilometers, JetBlue will be looking at options to save weight in the aircraft’s interior. “We can be part of the solution too. You buy a new aircraft and fit it out with really nice Business Class and coach seats. What we have to do before we bring this into service is work with Airbus as a partner on it. We can all do with a diet and I certainly need one but airplanes need diets too. So we must look at how to take some weight off the airplane, so it will give us that range. We are keen to protect the miles.”

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