The low cost American carrier, JetBlue is in discussions with Airbus SE (European Plane-maker) to make some changes to its existing order of 85 A321 Neo aircrafts placed with the manufacturer.
It may be noted that that in April 2019 the sixth largest carrier in the US, JetBlue has announced that it would be converting 13 A321 Neo Airbus aircrafts on order into the longer range A321LR aircrafts for serving its new transatlantic routes between a) New York to London and b) Boston to London.
Robert Hayes, the Chief Executive of JetBlue Airways Corp Monday (June 4th) confirmed that JetBlue is now looking for flights with more ‘stamina’ to serve the new routes on its transatlantic flights, reports Reuters. He says that that the A321LR long version aircrafts that were intended for use on the new routes may not be the right ones and he feels that a plane like A321XLR with more stamina would be more appropriate to fly to the new destinations.
On the sidelines of a global airline meeting in Seoul Robert Hayes says “London is the biggest opportunity because it has the higher fares, but there would be other opportunities if we had an airplane with more range.”
The A321XLR model of planes has still not been launched by the European Plane-Maker, Air Bus SE and a formal product announcement is expected sometime in June. Meanwhile Robert Hayes plans to study the A321XLR model in detail before making any concrete decision.
