In addition to announcing an agreement to connect flights with Turkish Airlines, JetBlue said today that Palm Beach will become the 13th destination for non-stop travel out of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The carrier airline said in a press release issued on Tuesday that flights between San Juan Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU) and Palm Beach International Airport (PBI) would be priced at as low as $93 through May 25, 2012 for travels from May 29 through June 21, 2012. John Checketts, director of route planning for JetBlue, stated that with the addition of the West Palm Beach airport, flights out of Puerto Rico now reach five locations in the state of Florida.
"We feel honored to have the support of a great airline like JetBlue, which has maintained an important expansion trend this year. The West Palm Beach route is new to Puerto Rico, provides a new option for passengers to get to Puerto Rico. These new flight will have an economic impact surpassing $30 million to the local economy,," added the Secretary of the Department of Economic Development and Commerce, Jose R. Perez-Riera, as noted in JetBlue's press release issued Tuesday afternoon.
An average flight between San Juan and Palm Beach would be between two-and-a-half hours to three hours non-stop, with daily trips available from May 15, 2012. The JetBlue flights from Palm Beach to San Juan, and vice versa, will be operated with the airline's Airbus A320 fleet, according to the press release. The 12 previous destinations out of San Juan are: Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Hartford, Jacksonville, New York, Newark, Orlando, and Tampa in the United States, and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and St. Croix throughout the Caribbean.
"The growth in JetBlue flights from East Coast and Florida destinations, like the one from West Palm Beach we celebrate today, shows the importance of Puerto Rico as a major airline hub in the Caribbean. At the Puerto Rico Tourism Company we continue to work towards developing strategies and alliances to strengthen our destination's offerings... including fishing. The latter, in fact, is particularly attractive to JetBlue passengers and those who will now visit us from West Palm Beach, Florida," said Puerto Rico Tourism Company's Executive Director, Luis Rivera-Marin, in the press release.
