I sure didn’t see this one coming… American and Jet Blue have signed and interline agreement and will cross-sell each other’s flights in and out of Boston and New York-JFK. Notably, the airlines are not codesharing, and it’s a northeast operation, with no love for California or Florida.

The relevant quotes from the release:

The partnership will focus on routes into and out of JFK and Boston Logan International Airport that extend and complement each others’ networks. For example, it would provide seamless service for customers who wish to fly nonstop from Nantucket to JFK on JetBlue and from there to London on American. Likewise, customers can board American from Paris to JFK and connect to a nonstop flight on JetBlue to Burlington, Vt. JetBlue customers will be able to effortlessly connect on flights to 12 of American’s international destinations from JFK and Boston including Barcelona, Spain; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Tokyo, Japan.
[...]
Customers of both airlines are expected to benefit from improved connections, while each airline will see additional customers fed into their networks. None of the routes on which the airlines will cooperate overlap current flights served by the other. The agreement will provide connections for more passengers at JFK and Boston to American’s international destinations in Europe, Asia, and South America. It also will generate more traffic and support for American’s planned joint business with oneworld partners British Airways and Iberia between North America and Europe, and with Japan Airlines between North America and Asia.

What makes this especially unexpected is JetBlue’s recent moves toward Lufthansa (which is a part-owner of JetBlue) and AerLingus.

It appears that my early thinking — that JetBlue would start moving toward bigger partnerships and perhaps even alliance membership — may be wrong. It looks like JetBlue is willing to make ad hoc agreements with anyone, but it’s clear that they’re branching out to create more of a global network.

Will JetBlue flights count toward AAdvantage? Vice versa? If so, it will be an interesting question how the programs, which function very differently, reconcile.

Stay tuned.

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