JetBlue’s 25th Birthday Challenge, and My Plan of Attack

Let’s get the most important bit out of the way first: This is a pretty bad idea. That said, the challenge of figuring out a reasonable* way to complete JetBlue‘s 25th Birthday Mosaic promotion scratched an itch for me.

And so, at least for the moment, I’ve got a plan that will see me fly to 25 unique JetBlue airports over the next few months, collecting 350,000 TrueBlue points and 25 years of Mosaic 1 status along the way.

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The Promotion

To celebrate its 25th birthday JetBlue launched a promotion tied to its TrueBlue loyalty program. Travelers who arrive at 15 unique airports in the JetBlue network through the end of the year will score 150,000 bonus points. Getting to 20 total airports adds another 200,000 points to the tally. And another five – for 25 total airport arrivals – adds 25 years of Mosaic status on top of that.

Sure, there are reasons to question whether JetBlue will still be a standalone operation 25 years from now**. Or if I will still be flying much then. But this is the closest thing the carrier has ever had to a lifetime status option (unless you actually run the program), so I figured it was at least worth a look.

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The Fine Print

The rules are surprisingly generous. Basic economy (“Blue Basic”) fares, codeshares, and partner flights are excluded. But vacation packages count. So do previously-booked trips. The program runs through the end of the year, offering plenty of time to play it out.

Each airport in a multi-airport city counts. And connections count, as the passenger will arrive in that airport. Alas, the JetBlue route network strongly disfavors connecting flow, so that last bit ultimately does not matter for me (and I assume nearly everyone else who might pull this off), but it was still a nice to have it explicitly stated by the airline.

And, most importantly for me, award bookings are included as well (more on that below).

Putting Together a Plan

This is not my first time trying to pull together a silly JetBlue itinerary covering many airports in a short period of time.

I flew the carrier’s All You Can Jet promotion in both 2008 and 2009. That offered a month of unlimited flying, and I pushed pretty hard both times (though others definitely did more). The goal then, as now, was to collect as many airports as I could. This time around the fares matter a lot more.

Indeed, my first effort at an itinerary was based solely on schedules – though skipping redeye trips – and came in at nine days straight of travel. It also priced out at just over $5,000. That was not really viable.

It also exposed a reality of the JetBlue schedules that I’ve long been aware of, but which I never bothered to think too much about since I generally fly out of a JetBlue hub: connections are not a key consideration.

There are a handful of markets aimed at delivering connections. Most recently Manchester, NH was added for that purpose. It will not be extended past the summer experiment. Other markets like Richmond, Detroit, Providence, and Hartford all have flights timed to feed connections at JFK (and I’ll take advantage of that). But the bulk of the airline’s operations are not suited to that.

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Nearly half the routes – 45% for the date I sampled – operate just once a day. And many of them depart at the same time from hubs. Getting from San Juan to St Thomas or St Croix is possible, but not both on the same day. Ditto for flights from Boston to Traverse City, MI; Asheville, NC; Bozeman, MT; and Wilmington, NC.

This translates to longer total travel times and generally end-on-end pricing, costing more in both time and money to string multiple airports together on the same day.

Many routes are also operated out-and-back from a hub. That’s good for operational reliability; an interruption is unlikely to cascade. But it is also often slightly less efficient for aircraft utilization and makes stringing together multiple airports harder.

The network is also skewed towards longer flights in general. The average stage length for a July Friday is 1,305 miles per Cirium data. Excluding international routes that drops to 1,205. Combined with operating mostly in the relatively busy NYC and BOS airspaces, that means 3+ hour average block times. Collecting a lot of airports in a short period of time is not easy.

Finally, the carrier’s Southern California operations are now transcon-only, killing yet another way of picking up some shorter trips. Especially since I have a spare day in LA in September that would’ve been perfect for this. Instead I’ll probably work that day.

Fun with Fares

This was also a good opportunity to learn that, while JetBlue’s operations are not built on connections, there are still markets where it sells some city pairs that way, often significantly less expensive than as a round trip from the hub. Pricing a ticket from Richmond to Traverse City was ~30% less expensive than Richmond to Boston and then Boston to Traverse City, for example.

Ultimately I ended up not using this route, but the effect was similar on several I did book.

Interestingly, however, JetBlue will not always sell trips that it can price. Google Flights advertises – and third party OTAs will sell – Syracuse to Buffalo via JFK. Not only will JetBlue not sell that as a one-way trip, but it will also not sell it as a multi-city ticket. Maybe that makes sense, as the market for flying that route is decidedly narrow. But it is also a scenario where I ended up paying a bit more to book it via points as two itineraries rather than a single booking.

Clusters of Flights

Access to schedule data from Cirium made many of these limitations visible to me relatively early in my searching. I also knew I couldn’t take 10 days off work to speed run the experience. Instead, I built three main clusters of travel, plus a couple trips I had previously planned.

Starting Short

Recall I bemoaned the lack of short flights in the JetBlue route network. But that doesn’t mean there are none. My first two days of flying will pick up six unique airport arrivals in under 36 hours, including seven hours at an overnight stop.

Day one has me flying from Boston to Norfolk, then to Presque Isle via Boston. A short overnight then on to Martha’s Vineyard (stupid expensive on Sundays, but affordable most other days of the week) and Savannah, before a funky routing (see below) back to Manchester that night.

Exploring the East

To really make this work means a lot of north-south travel on the eastern seaboard. It is where the bulk of JetBlue’s network operates and is unavoidable to cover multiple airports. My middle batch of flying hits a lot of them.

As with my first trip, it will start with a one way to an outstation that has early morning service back to a hub. From there a trio of coastal flight each of the next two days, then a pair to get back to Boston at a reasonable hour.

Completing this chunk of flights should trigger the 15 airport bonus of 150,000 points into my TrueBlue account.

A Silly Celebration

Mixed into the JetBlue festivities this Fall is the retirement of the carrier’s last E190 from operation. That’s expected to happen on 4 September with a JFK-BOS trip (B6 1900). I booked a seat a couple weeks back, figuring it’ll be a fun party. I also assumed I’d take the bus to NYC for that, as it is how I generally get to New York City these days.

This promo drove a much less rational decision. I’ll fly from Boston to Nantucket to White Plains, then take Metro North down from there. Decidedly less efficient, but nothing about this planning really makes much sense.

“Real” Trips

I do have some legitimate trips in my calendar. These include a family event and a conference (plus SpotLAX/DorkFest; come hang out, it is a lot of fun!) in Los Angeles. I’m flying JetBlue on those as well, to help pad out the numbers.

If things go to plan I’ll hit 20 airports and 200,000 more bonus points on 25 October during one of these trips.

The Final Push

A final three day weekend of flying should get me the remaining airports I need to complete the Mosaic component of the challenge.

It starts with a short hop to non-hub, just like the other two. From there I have five different JFK connections over two days to collect my final five airports and the 25 years of Mosaic 1 status.

This includes the aforementioned Syracuse-Buffalo trip, as well as Buffalo to Raleigh, Raleigh to Detroit, and Detroit to Charleston.

So that’s likely to be a mess, but at least on paper the plan makes sense. I also have a cushion time-wise before the end of the year to fill in a couple extra trips if needed because these fall apart.

Paying in Points

I also decided that, if I could pull this off, paying in points was probably the smarter choice for me. I have plenty in my account, and the 350,000 bonus points earned would be more than I spend on the travels by a significant margin.

Booking with points also takes advantage of the 10% rebate benefit of being a TrueBlue CC holder. Plus, points bookings are more fungible, as cancelling puts the points back into my TrueBlue account and the taxes to Travel Bank, but I’m not potentially stuck with a significant credit balance with JetBlue as things change. And I expect they will change.

Alas, booking with points also exposes another shortcoming with the JetBlue systems: multi-city trips are not supported. And almost all my trips are multi-city itineraries. Instead, they become a series of one-ways, occasionally paying an extra $5.60 for a TSA screening that will not occur. In the end, that was a wash to me based on the other benefits of points-based booking for this endeavor.

Paying with cash would earn me more Mosaic credits this year, possibly pushing me to Mosaic 2 status (I already have Mosaic 1 in the bag). But I’m not convinced that’s worth the out-of-pocket expense nor the risk as plans might change along the way.

Tweaking the Trip

In one scenario for the first cluster I found myself up against an overnight turn just over six hours. Assuming everything went smoothly that would be maybe four hours to sleep in a hotel (and there were none on-property at the airport). But JetBlue is not the only airline that serves these airports. And I could skip a segment on JetBlue, as I’ll arrive at the hubs several times on other trips.

Snagging a seat on Delta instead ultimately saves me money in the long term, as well as a bit of sanity and sleep. That’s the red line on the first map.

I realized that would work after the initial flurry of bookings and made the changes, taking advantage of my decision to pay with points for everything. I expect there will be more such tweaks along the way; I’m pretty sure I already identified another one.

But, for now, I’ve got a plan to visit 25*** different JetBlue airports.

So, What’s the Damage?

All told, I booked the full itinerary**** for about 215,000 points, plus ~$100ish in TSA fees. The cash cost for the bookings was ~$3,100, much better than the $5,000 on the initial itinerary I built. I’ll get 10% of the points back when I’m done, making it ~194k points spent in the end. I also need to pay for six hotel nights, plus the bus to and from Boston a few times. And that Delta segment for $138.

And I have to spend all that time on airplanes and in airports. Heck, it took over an hour just to make all the bookings, and I was running three separate tabs to get through the process faster.

The payoff should be a net increase of my TrueBlue balance by ~155k points (roughly $2100 in airfare at 1.4cpp, which is in line with what I saw as value in the redemptions to book all this), plus 25 years of Mosaic status.

And one helluva story.

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*Yeah, I know. Not at all reasonable by any normal standards. But I’m me and I haven’t had a silly adventure like this in a while, so here we are. If anyone wants to join for a chunk of it or say hi during a connection reach out.

**Chatter these days posits United will buy JetBlue eventually, extending the Blue Sky deal just signed. Assuming that happens (which, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) would United honor the status? Probably? Maybe?? But I already have Million Miler status with United, so it probably wouldn’t help me, even if it comes to pass.

***Not all of them are in the maps. A guy has to have some secrets.

****Not including the previously planned and work/family trips that were already happening. One of those was a bit more than I wanted to pay, but overall not a huge shift in my expected spend for the back half of the year.