A JetBlue Airlines plane lands near the air traffic control tower at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport October 7, 2025 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
JetBlue Airways is already the largest airline in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and it wants to get even bigger.
“Lauderdale has been a star for us,” JetBlue President Marty St. George said this month of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Capitalizing on Broward County Airport’s growth is key for JetBlue, which is revamping its network and rolling out more premium options, such as a first-class domestic cabin, to return to profitability. Its last profitable quarter was two years ago.
JetBlue was looking to expand in Fort Lauderdale even before Spirit Airlines, the No. 1 airport discounter based in South Florida, collapsed May 2 under the weight of debt and years of snowballing problems.
JetBlue is now the leading carrier with 36% market share in terms of airport capacity, according to a Cirium count of 2,026 capacity, up from about 24% a year earlier. From May to June of this year, JetBlue added 5% more capacity, while larger competitors pulled out during Florida’s offseason, according to Cirium.
The carrier has about 106 scheduled flights per day on average this year, compared to about 68 per day last year, according to Cirium data.
Just hours after Spirit’s collapse, JetBlue and other airlines made their own travel plans, adding flights to fill the void in Fort Lauderdale.
JetBlue raised its revenue forecast for the year on June 1, citing strong demand.
“I’m very, very optimistic about how customers have responded to JetBlue’s growth,” St. George said.
JetBlue says it expects even more growth as additional gates become available after Spirit’s demise. Some of those doors are still blocked in bankruptcy court.
JetBlue’s plan is to operate about 150 daily flights to Fort Lauderdale during the peak winter months, including Presidents Day weekend and some school holidays, a schedule that will put it on par with JetBlue’s Boston Logan International Airport hub, the largest after New York.
The plan includes more international destinations from Fort Lauderdale and emphasizes premium air travel.
St. George said the carrier is exploring sites for a lounge — which would be the third in its network — in Fort Lauderdale to cater to those customers. It already has lounges at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and in Boston.
“It’s not yet clear where we would put a lounge,” he said. “I think the people at the airport are just as excited about having a lounge there. Certainly, given the size of our operations and the number of premium customers coming in and out of Fort Lauderdale, I think [it makes] lots of common sense, just find the right place. »
The big competitive threat lies about 26 miles south at Miami International Airport, a American airlines hub that dwarfs Fort Lauderdale. Both airports, although Miami is much larger, are major hubs for leisure customers as well as those visiting friends and relatives in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“There are a good number of customers for [whom] Miami is the right airport, which will never leave Miami, and we have no intention of converting those customers,” St. George said. “I think as we get more service to Fort Lauderdale as broader destinations, the usefulness of Lauderdale Airport will increase.”
American announced Friday plans to operate a record 100 destinations to the Caribbean, Mexico and other Latin American airports from the United States, including 77 from Miami, including a new flight to Maracaibo, Venezuela, starting July 14 and to Cap-Haitien, Haiti, starting November 1.
JetBlue, for its part, recently announced Fort Lauderdale-Caracas service, as carriers ramp up flights. American announced in January that it would resume service to Venezuela from the United States for the first time since 2019, weeks after the United States captured the Venezuelan president.