After the collapse of Spirit Airlines, JetBlue Airways has emerged as the top carrier at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In an airport ceremony featuring JetBlue\u2019s top two executives and local political and business leaders, the New York-based airline disclosed that it operates 130 daily flights to more than 55 nonstop destinations.<\/p>\n
\u201cFort Lauderdale has been part of JetBlue\u2019s story for more than 26 years,\u201d JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty said to an audience gathered at the Terminal 3 departure area. She continued, \u201cIn fact, Fort Lauderdale was the very first destination for JetBlue out of JFK, making this part of our story from Day One.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recruiting Former Spirit Crew Members<\/p>\n
The airline, which is expanding its daily operations in Fort Lauderdale from 130 flights to 150 by the end of the year, will need additional manpower. As part of its expansion, JetBlue plans to hire former Spirit employees.<\/p>\n
Geraghty said, \u201cJetBlue\u2019s growing in the Fort Lauderdale area. We\u2019re now at 130 flights. We\u2019re going to be growing to about 150 by the end, so we are hiring across most of our workgroups and hiring Spirit crew members.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For many former Spirit customers, the question remains whether JetBlue\u2019s fares will be as competitive as Spirit\u2019s pricing. She said \u201cWe want fares to be affordable, but we want to make sure we offer a great product, too.\u201d She also noted that labor and fuel remain two of the airline\u2019s biggest expenses.<\/p>\n
Geraghty said the airline aims to enhance the passenger experience. This includes amenities such as complimentary Wi-Fi, snacks, and additional legroom.<\/p>\n
She said, \u201cWe\u2019re very mindful of the fact that we need to have affordable fares for flyers that maybe don\u2019t want to purchase the higher or mid fares.\u201d She added \u201cYou get more free Wi-Fi, snacks, a little legroom (and) television.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aside from the West Coast, JetBlue is also looking to expand its offerings for customers flying through the East Coast.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor people who are flying up and down the East Coast, we will have 370 connecting opportunities to Fort Lauderdale,\u201d Geraghty said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the collapse of Spirit Airlines, JetBlue Airways has emerged as the top carrier at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250,26950,109],"class_list":["post-336540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-instagram","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}