Refocusing its network in an effort to restore profitability, JetBlue will exit four cities and cut flights from Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale.
The carrier will halt service to Bogotá, Colombia; Quito, Ecuador; Lima, Peru; and Kansas City, Mo.
Those exits will take place on June 13, according to an internal memo written by JetBlue's president of network planning, Dave Jehn.
The airline currently flies one route to each of those four cities, with Fort Lauderdale completing the city pair for the South American destinations and New York JFK being the connection from Kansas City.
Also, JetBlue will cut 16 year-round and seasonal routes, including six from Los Angeles and five from Fort Lauderdale.
Though JetBlue considers Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale focus cities, the moves will make a much deeper cut into Los Angeles, from which the airline is serving 16 cities this month, than Fort Lauderdale, from which JetBlue is serving 39 cities, Cirium flight schedule data shows.
JetBlue also said that it will not resume service at New York Stewart Airport, where it last operated in April 2019. JetBlue flew from Stewart to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando. Stewart is approximately 60 miles north of New York City, where JetBlue is based at JFK Airport.
"These moves will allow us to redeploy our fleet to increase frequencies on well-performing routes from JetBlue's focus cities while continuing to increase crucial ground time for our aircraft, reducing the chance of delays for our customers," JetBlue said.
Last year, JetBlue had an on-time performance of 67.1%, DOT data shows. It bested only Frontier among the 10 largest U.S. carriers.
JetBlue said the changes will help it navigate a year in which aircraft availability will be impacted by groundings of Airbus planes as they undergo long-lasting inspections of Pratt & Whitney GTF engines for potential metal contamination.
JetBlue's cuts are consistent with plans that new CEO Joanna Geraghty laid out in January to bring the carrier back to profitability should its merger plan with Spirit fall through. The carriers have since ended their appeal of the court ruling that blocked the JetBlue acquisition.
Geraghty said in January that absent Spirit, JetBlue would seek to reverse its losses by reining in costs, refocusing on core markets from New York and Boston, and developing new revenue initiatives.
JetBlue reported a net loss of $310 million for 2023, with a pre-tax operating loss of 3.5%.