Confirmed: JetBlue & United Pursue Partnership, But What’s The Motive?

It sure has been quite the 24 hours when it comes to JetBlue and its potential partnerships. We’ve known that JetBlue has been looking for a domestic airline partner, and yesterday, and it seemed like either American or United would be the best fit.

Yesterday, American revealed it was no longer in discussions with JetBlue about a possible partnership, leading many of us to believe that a United partnership (or something) was incoming. Well, that’s basically now confirmed.

What we know about planned JetBlue & United partnership

During JetBlue’s Q1 2025 earnings call today, President Marty St. George was asked about domestic airline partnerships, and he suggested that JetBlue was very close to announcing such a deal, and it would include frequent flyer reciprocity. Specifically, he said the following:

“I need to make sure I reserve my comments based on what we have said publicly. And what we have said is we are looking at and we’re talking to multiple airlines about domestic partnerships. I think we’re getting very close to making announcement, expect to make the announcement this quarter. And as far as the benefits that we expect to offer to our customers, now the most important thing is number one, a significantly higher network opportunity for earn and burn of TrueBlue points, which we think greatly improves utility of TrueBlue.”

“Today, if you are a customer in the Northeast and you love JetBlue for leisure, but, you know, twice a year, you have to go to Omaha or Boise, these are places that you can’t earn through Blue points on now. And when this partnership goes forward, you will be able to. And the second thing is I’m really excited for just the overall broadening of the network opportunities, you know, not just connectivity, but also just sort of better opportunities for our customers to fly more places with more frequency.”

Reuters is now reporting that JetBlue and United are actively negotiating a partnership, according to several industry sources. For now, the partnership is expected to be about providing greater connectivity to customers, and allowing them to earn and redeem frequent flyer points across the two carriers.

For now, the two companies apparently aren’t planning on partnering more closely than that, so there won’t be coordinating of schedules or pricing. Based on what we know about the partnership being proposed, this shouldn’t face any sort of regulatory challenges. It’s also worth emphasizing that it’s not finalized yet, so things could still change.

I’m a little confused about the merit of this arrangement

The way I view it, a partnership like this will have very little impact on the bottom line of either carrier. I’d say that United has more to gain than JetBlue, though.

Looking at it from United’s perspective, I guess this prevents JetBlue from partnering with another US airline, so that helps United’s competitive position.

United is part of the Star Alliance transatlantic joint venture, and perhaps there’s some opportunity for more connectivity in Boston (BOS) and New York (JFK) between JetBlue and United’s partners (Austrian, Lufthansa, SWISS, etc.). I’m not sure how exactly the joint venture is structured, as it doesn’t seem like that would lead to much revenue for United.

Sure, maybe being able to earn and redeem points on JetBlue makes United MileagePlus a bit more appealing, though I don’t think that would be any sort of a game changer. Quite to the contrary, I’d view the loyalty aspect of this as a zero sum game, since it’s not like the carriers are particularly complementary otherwise.

Furthermore, United doesn’t actually want its MileagePlus members flying JetBlue instead of United, since it’s not like there would be a revenue sharing agreement. The carriers’ networks just don’t cross paths in many places in a way that’s useful for travelers.

Perhaps this is even more puzzling from JetBlue’s perspective, because keep in mind that JetBlue seemingly turned down American in favor of United. American’s partnership with JetBlue was great for consumers, and made sense commercially, as it allowed JetBlue to provide feed for American’s long haul flights in New York and beyond, a win-win arrangement.

From a loyalty perspective, I’m also not convinced that this would hugely benefit JetBlue. If anything, it’s more likely that someone who flies JetBlue every once in a while would be engaged in United MileagePlus, if they could credit their JetBlue flights there.

So I’m sort of scratching my head. I’m sure there’s a good reason for this partnership being pursued, and I bet we’ll find out soon. I just don’t see the vision yet.

The only thing I can come up with is that this is intended to be a first step toward closer long term collaboration between the two airlines, where we do start to see an attempt at coordinating flights, or even more than that. But that would also potentially face regulatory concerns.

Bottom line

It’s basically confirmed that JetBlue and United are currently negotiating a partnership, and that something will be announced in the coming weeks. The plan is reportedly to make this largely about frequent flyer reciprocity, so that members of both programs can earn and redeem points across both airlines.

However, I have to imagine that there will be more to this partnership, or that there’s at least a bigger goal in the long run. After all, based on what we know so far, this doesn’t fulfill United CEO Scott Kirby’s dream of the airline returning to JFK. It also doesn’t seem better for JetBlue than a partnership with American.

What do you make of JetBlue and United pursuing a partnership?