A JetBlue Airways airplane lands close to the Air Site visitors Management tower on the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Worldwide Airport on Oct. 7, 2025 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Photos
JetBlue Airways is already the largest airline in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and it needs to get even greater.
“Lauderdale has been a star for us,” JetBlue President Marty St. George stated this month about Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Worldwide Airport.
Capitalizing on progress on the Broward County airport is essential for JetBlue because it revamps its community and rolls out extra high-end choices like a home first-class cabin to return to profitability. Its final worthwhile quarter was two years in the past.
JetBlue was seeking to broaden in Fort Lauderdale even earlier than Spirit Airways, the South Florida-based discounter that was No. 1 on the airport, collapsed on Might 2 below the burden of debt and years of snowballing issues.
JetBlue is now the highest provider with 36% market share by capability on the airport, in response to a Cirium tally of 2026 capability, up from about 24% a yr earlier. From Might to June of this yr, JetBlue added 5% extra capability, whereas massive rivals pulled again within the Florida offseason, in response to Cirium.
The provider has about 106 flights scheduled a day for this yr on common, up from about 68 a day final yr, Cirium information reveals.
Simply hours after Spirit’s collapse, JetBlue and different airways laid out their very own journey plans, including flights to fill the void at Fort Lauderdale.
JetBlue raised its income forecast for the yr on June 1, citing sturdy demand.
“I am feeling very, very bullish about how clients have responded to JetBlue’s progress,” St. George stated.
JetBlue says it is planning for much more progress as extra gates turn into obtainable after Spirit’s demise. A few of these gates are nonetheless tied up in chapter courtroom.
JetBlue’s plan is to function about 150 every day flights at Fort Lauderdale within the peak winter months, which embrace Presidents Day weekend and a few college breaks, a schedule that may put it on par with JetBlue’s Boston Logan Worldwide Airport hub, its largest after New York.
The plan contains extra worldwide locations leaving from Fort Lauderdale and a deal with premium air journey.
St. George stated the provider has been reviewing websites for a lounge — which might be the third in its community — at Fort Lauderdale to cater to these clients. It already has lounges at New York’s John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport and in Boston.
“It’s unclear proper now the place we’d put a lounge,” he stated. “The airport people, I feel, are equally motivated to have a lounge down there. Actually, given the scale of our operation and the variety of premium clients going out and in of Fort Lauderdale, I feel [it makes] a whole lot of sense, we simply have to search out the fitting location.”
The massive aggressive menace lies about 26 miles south, at Miami Worldwide Airport, an American Airways hub that dwarfs Fort Lauderdale. Each airports, although Miami is far bigger, are main hubs for leisure clients in addition to these visiting pals and family in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“There is a good variety of clients for [whom] Miami is the fitting airport, who won’t ever go away Miami, and we’re not planning on changing these clients,” St. George stated. “I do suppose that as we get extra service in Fort Lauderdale as a much bigger breadth of locations, that utility of Lauderdale Airport will go up.”
American on Friday stated it plans to function a document 100 locations to the Caribbean, Mexico and different airports in Latin America from the U.S., with 77 of them leaving from Miami, together with a brand new flight to Maracaibo, Venezuela, from July 14 and to Cap-Haitien, Haiti, beginning Nov. 1.
JetBlue, for its half, introduced Fort Lauderdale to Caracas service lately, as carriers construct up flights. American in January introduced it will resume resume service to Venezuela from america for the primary time since 2019, weeks after the U.S. captured Venezuela’s president.