Blue Sky partnership benefits from uniform PaxEx at JetBlue, United

When JetBlue and American Airlines entered into their Northeast Alliance strategic joint venture, the pairing attempted to bring together two very different airlines.

JetBlue, with its fleet-wide seatback screens and free Wi-Fi, offers a premium passenger experience. American, on the other hand, lacks seatback screens on the vast majority of its narrowbody fleet and at the time didn’t even offer free messaging, let alone entirely free Wi-Fi. For most passengers, these airlines represented near polar opposite #PaxEx.

After the court system struck down the Northeast Alliance, JetBlue turned to United Airlines and formed the Blue Sky reciprocal loyalty collaboration. Now in its second year, the partnership is finally seeing deeper levels of integration for flyers with an airline much more aligned with JetBlue’s experience.

I had some JetBlue flight credits kicking around for nearly a year and decided to check out how the partnership is going by flying aboard a JetBlue A220 from New York JFK to Chicago O’Hare and a United 737-800 for my return to New York LaGuardia.

I currently have Mosaic 1 status with JetBlue, its lowest tier in the True Blue program. As I had booked a “Main Base” fare I wouldn’t be seeing much in the way of benefits on this flight. The only tangible benefit on JetBlue was expedited security and boarding at JFK T5.

Much to my surprise, the TSA checkpoint at JFK was deserted. I’m used to seeing lines nearly spill out the revolving doors here, so I took the win and breezed through TSA PreCheck (JetBlue does not participate in Touchless PreCheck) in seconds.

I declined to purchase a seat assignment since the flight was operated with an Airbus A220 with its fantastic 2-3 seat layout.

Despite the low odds of a middle seat assignment, that’s exactly what I got. At least it was towards the front of the aircraft so I could make a quick exit in Chicago.

Though the flight was nearly full, an empty seat in my row allowed for some extra breathing room and I moved over to the open window seat.

I had already logged into the seatback screen during boarding, and was pleasantly surprised to find that, when I shifted over to the window seat, my already favorited content shifted over as well. This functionality often doesn’t work on airlines that promise it.

The empty middle seat also gave me an opportunity to give JetBlue’s Watch Party feature a try, and it worked nearly flawlessly, better than on any other airline I have tried.

The free Viasat-powered Wi-Fi had its ups and downs but mostly worked. The only thing missing here is Bluetooth audio, which none of JetBlue’s current aircraft offer. (The carrier will bring the feature to Blue First when it debuts the Collins Aerospace MiQ-based recliner product with new 13.3″ Thales IFE screens this year.)

After a few snacks and a beer (included with my Mosaic status), we arrived in Chicago ahead of schedule — a win I don’t take for granted with JetBlue.

I had used MileagePlus points to book my return flight home with United. Despite United explicitly claiming it wasn’t possible, I was able successfully apply my JetBlue TrueBlue number to the United reservation to take advantage of the Blue Sky benefits! This allowed me to select a preferred seat during booking, and would allow for the selection of an extra-legroom Economy Plus seat at check-in, both of which worked without issue.

I had initially booked the last flight of the day back to LaGuardia, but listed as standby for earlier flights multiple times throughout the day on United’s fantastic app. I don’t think it’s even possible to list for standby on JetBlue’s extremely basic app, let alone move to multiple earlier flights.

Unfortunately, when my standby seat was confirmed United’s system moved me to the last row of the new flight, despite the back half of the aircraft being completely empty.

When I asked the gate agent to move me back to Economy Plus, they had never heard of JetBlue status opening free Economy Plus seats and assigned me a regular economy seat. Whatever, the flight was basically empty. But if the flight had been full, I would have been upset.

Just before boarding the Boeing 737-800, the flight crew determined that it was too hot on board and a substitute aircraft would have to be found for the flight. This is where things got interesting.

Chicago is a massive hub for United, so its operations team was able to easily find a new aircraft with a delay of just 30 minutes. Had this been JetBlue on my prior flight, speaking from experience, I would have expected hours of delay. United almost hit that 30-minute delay estimate but it took a while longer to move catering over to the new aircraft.

Regardless, an hour of delay for an aircraft swap is impressive stuff!

Once on board it became clear how logical JetBlue and United are as partners, at least as far as the in-flight #PaxEx goes. United is well on its way to offering seatback screens on all mainline aircraft and free Wi-Fi on nearly all flights to match JetBlue.