JetBlue Airways (B6, New York JFK) is considering widebody aircraft alongside the A321neo(Long Range) as it prepares to begin venturing further abroad.
David Clark, jetBlue’s Vice President (Network Planning), told Skift in an interview: "We are very open to seeing all the options that are out there. We are certainly looking at widebodies. It’s less that we are looking at every widebody right now and more sort of [evaluating] widebodies in general versus the [A321LR]. We want to see which might be a better fit for us.”
Last year, jetBlue's Executive Vice President (Commercial & Planning), Marty St. George, said the LCC was looking at expanding into previously untapped Latin American as well transatlantic markets such as Brazil and Western Europe.
Launched in January 2015, the A321neo LR will offer a range of 4,000nm with a 93.5 tonne MTOW making it ideal for flights between Europe and the US East Coast among others. It will seat 206 in a two-class configuration. Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) expects it to enter revenue service from 2019 onwards.
jetBlue currently operates thirty-two A321-200s with an additional twenty-nine due for delivery. It also has sixty A321neo on order.
European rivals Norwegian (Oslo Gardermoen) and even SAS Scandinavian Airlines (SK, Copenhagen Kastrup) have both expressed their own interests in using the A321neo(LR) to develop flights between smaller cities on either side of the Atlantic.
