JetBlue drops flights to DFW with air travel ‘exceptionally challenged due to the coronavirus’

JetBlue will drop flights to DFW International Airport and five other destinations through June as the carrier struggles to put passengers in seats.

Starting Monday, JetBlue is suspending flights from DFW Airport to Boston, the only destination the carrier serves from North Texas. Airports in Houston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Portland, Ore., are also losing JetBlue service.

JetBlue doesn’t plan to return until at least June 30.

“The revised schedules are aimed at reducing excess flying during a time of unprecedented low demand for air travel,” the company said in a statement.

JetBlue said even after dropping service from twice a day to three times a week between Boston and DFW, some flights had as few as four passengers, according to a regulatory filing in April.

“The demand environment continues to be exceptionally challenged due to the coronavirus," JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes said in a call with investors Thursday.

JetBlue was granted permission by the U.S. Department of Transportation to cut flights to 16 cities. JetBlue needed approval because it was one of the airlines that took stimulus money and one of the stipulations was to maintain air service to all of its current destinations.

But several airlines have been granted exemptions because the cities already have several carriers or because they are vacation destinations.

JetBlue said it will maintain minimal service to other cities, including Atlanta, Seattle, Las Vegas and Phoenix.

JetBlue launched its DFW to Boston service in 2012 as the low-cost carrier was expanding rapidly across the country. JetBlue kept service from DFW, but never managed to expand service beyond the one route.

DFW Airport, the fourth busiest in the world before the COVID-19 pandemic, has already lost dozens of nonstop flights to destinations such as New York’s JFK International Airport, Paris and Honolulu.

Some flights have been dropped because they are in areas with larger numbers of COVID-19 cases. Others have been dropped because vacation travel has decreased or because of government-mandated quarantines.