JetBlue Airways Corp. will reduce its seasonal flights out of Long Beach Airport when its summer schedule goes into effect, although the airline will not eliminate any destinations from its current slate of outbound flights.
Compared to its summer 2014 scheduled, JetBlue will offer one fewer flight per day to Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Oakland, LGB executive director Bryant L. Francis and a JetBlue spokesman said Monday.
Also, JetBlue won’t have a red-eye flight to Washington-Dulles International Airport on its summer list. The airline cut that flight in late 2014, Francis and airline spokesman Morgan Johnston said.
The upshot is that JetBlue will offer 26 flights, four fewer this summer than the same season last year.
The way the changes break down, JetBlue will have four Long Beach-to-Las Vegas flights on its 2015 summer schedule, Johnston said. The airline will have three flights to Oakland and two to Salt Lake City.
Francis, who said the changes to JetBlue’s schedule is expected to be in effect by the end of June, previously disclosed JetBlue’s plans to reduce flight frequencies during a meeting of the city’s Airport Advisory Commission last week. The airline’s decision will likely result in a continuation of falling passenger traffic at Long Beach Airport.
JetBlue is the primary carrier at Long Beach and has 32 of the 41 “slots” for passenger airline service allowed under the city’s noise control law.
In separate telephone interviews Monday, Francis and Johnston said the airline’s decision to cut flights is less a reflection of weakness in the Long Beach area market than JetBlue’s decision to allocate aircraft to airports where demand for flights is stronger.
“We have to make sure that we put those planes where they are doing to the most good for us,” Johnston said.
Johnston said it would be difficult to say specifically where aircraft that had previously served Long Beach would go, but did say JetBlue has recently expanded service to such domestic destinations as Reno and Cleveland.
Internationally, JetBlue has added flights to Grenada and Curacao.
JetBlue is still interested in adding international flights to Long Beach, Johnston said.
Long Beach’s City Council, however, recently voted in a 4-3 decision to delay any considerations of the airline’s proposal and the related task of asking the federal government to approve a U.S. Customs facility at the airport until well after voters select a new representative to fill a council vacancy.
The council’s action prevents Francis and other LGB staffers from doing any work that may lead to the addition of international flights at LGB, he said during Thursday’s meeting.
Francis called JetBlue’s new decision a “temporary lull.” The fewer flights, along with those lost when Horizon Air’s left Long Beach in January, will mean local passenger traffic falling off roughly 15 percent, he said.
Through February, LGB’s passenger traffic is down 12 percent, to nearly 362,000 passengers.
Airport revenue is 3 percent below projections through February. LGB administrative officer Dale Worsham said during Thursday’s meeting he anticipates revenues will be down 5 percent when the fiscal year concludes in September.
However, Francis said Monday that the declines in flights and revenues are not projected to trigger any specific service cuts in the airport’s next budget.
“It’s not the type of news we like to hear about,” he said. “I’m not looking at it as devastating.”
