JetBlue passengers have a new option for connections in South Florida. The carrier now partners with Brightline to sell rail and air tickets on a single itinerary.
In addition to allowing for passengers to book the trips, the two companies indicated they will take advantage of the interline agreement to help reroute passengers during flight disruptions. A cancelled flight to West Palm Beach might be rerouted via Orlando or Fort Lauderdale, with the train making up the remaining bits.
JetBlue and Brightline share a commitment to innovation and great service, and together we’re expanding transportation options for all of our customers to get to where they want to go, whether they’re starting their journey, heading to their final destination, or adjusting plans along the way.
– Dave Jehn, vice president, network planning and airline partnerships, JetBlue
Pricing appears to be simple end-on-end rates, with the Brightline Premium or Smart fare added on to the appropriate Mint or Blue fare. Because the trips all involve a partner JetBlue does not offer the Blue Basic option. It also does not offer an upsell to its higher priced economy class fare bundles. Brightline fares are also not available to be booked via TrueBlue points, nor do they earn points in the program.
The carrier explicitly states that transfers to and from the train station in Fort Lauderdale are included in the fare. It implies the same for Miami, but those transfers are (or were in January) run by a third party, so it is unclear how that works. The carrier did not respond to a query for clarification. JetBlue confirms that the Miami shuttle transfer service is not included in the fares.
JetBlue lists five Brightline train stations in its booking engine, plus collocated operations at Orlando. The airport codes used for the train stations, with the exception of Orlando where the operations are collocated, are not registered with IATA.
Similarly, while Brightline secured its own IATA code (BE) for use in such itineraries, JetBlue is selling the trips via the 9B code of AccessRail, an aggregator and integrator.
It also appears that some of the initial bugs with searches not working for markets where both train stations and airports exist have been solved. Ditto for not correctly displaying the train trip durations in the journey details views. But those did make it into the public for a brief period.
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