What the United JetBlue Partnership Signals for Passenger Experience and Airline Revenue Optimization

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby at the WSJ Future of Everything Festival. And to hear from him about the just-announced United JetBlue partnership that will bring United back to JFK in 2027. First, and most importantly, don’t call it a merger. Kirby was clear to point this out, and to explain, rightly, that “a lot can be done without a merger.” As aviation customer experience consultants, we recognize the scope of what can be done in the context of this partnership. The value it poses to customers, how it can positively impact revenue for both airlines. And how it invites other airlines to think about consumer value and revenue generation in new ways.

At a time when airlines are faced with economic and service disruption challenges, strong partnerships offer two important features. First, they open up more options for disruption management. Second, they create opportunities to grow and leverage loyalty programs. United and JetBlue recognize this, announcing they will extend reciprocal loyalty benefits across the two airlines. That includes benefits like priority boarding and seat upgrades, important passenger benefits that motivate them to earn and redeem more rewards, faster. Especially as more choices become available to them through the partnership.

Passenger Experience Benefits of the United JetBlue Partnership

The fact that this is a partnership, rather than a merger, improves the likelihood of seamless experience delivery. Internally, for each airline and its employees, there is no brain drain. There will not be a culture change. There is no integration of systems the way there would be in a merger. And there are no job losses. So it staves off the downsides of a merger. This matters for the airlines internally, of course. Also, it creates seamlessness for passengers. Since a seamless journey is the baseline expectation for experience-driven revenue streams, the path to successful outcomes for airlines and passengers looks promising.

Because we are in the business of passenger experience, we recognize the advantages that choice and control of the journey offer customers. This partnership empowers customers with convenient access to business and leisure destinations. JetBlue still has a phenomenal network on the East Coast, particularly in New York and Boston, and to Caribbean destinations. This is valuable for United passengers who previously did not have this level of access. It saves them the difficulty of developing that level of access from scratch.

For New York-area travelers in particular, increasing the choices of airports and flights helps customers personalize their experience and increase their options when planning travel. This aligns with a core customer experience value of providing consumer choice. Customers have more choices. Prices may go down because there are more flights (though, notably, the airlines say they will not collaborate on how they handle pricing or flight scheduling). More importantly, it brings additional convenience and personalization to the travel experience. In a world in which every brand, airlines included, is competing against the last best experience a customer has (from any provider, in any industry), the impact of choice, convenience, and personalization cannot be underestimated.

Loyalty Drives Airline Revenue

As we frequently discuss with airlines, loyalty is the only way to generate the lifetime value of the passenger. In fact, it is a critical opportunity to generate revenue for airlines over time. So, let’s consider the United Airlines, JetBlue Airways partnership through this lens. Reciprocal rewards enable the airlines to leverage customer loyalty to yield revenue for both airlines.

The loyalty benefit to airlines is clear. In 2024, United Airlines attributed 12.9% of its earnings to loyalty marketing and points redemption. Interestingly, Southwest, synonymous with low-cost (and infamous for its SysOps-related meltdown in 2023), attributed 21.1% of its revenue to loyalty marketing and points redemption. The more legacy model airlines have real opportunity to further leverage loyalty for revenue.

Moves like this one demonstrate how United and JetBlue can tap into loyalty as a sustained revenue driver going forward. Revenue gains are real, for airlines and airports, on and off the plane. According to a 2024 report in AX News, the average rewards member spends around 30% more in concessions per transaction. There is also data that confirms loyalty rewards programs keep customers flying. Airlines for America reports 77% of customers redeem points within one year of accruing them through travel rewards credit card.

What is the Value to the Passenger?

Importantly, loyalty benefits the customer, too. We don’t only say this because we are customer experience consultants who put customer happiness at the center of the experience. Rather, we say it because airline loyalty programs are standout examples of how investment in customer experience, and more importantly, innovative approaches to offering value to customers, lead to improvement of the human experience and put more money in the hands of both airlines and passengers. This is CX 101. What is good for the customer is good for the brand in a measurable way.

The airline industry has proven that loyalty to a carrier is the primary way for a customer to get value from their airline. To get value out of their relationship with that airline. Think of all the ways customers extract value from airline loyalty programs. As the airline, if you design the passenger experience right, meaning with an eye on the lifetime value of your customer, you create value-add moments along every phase of the customer journey. Beginning with booking and ending long after the flight lands. Loyalty programs enable customers to elevate their own experience, from preferential boarding to on-board beverages, to last-minute changes.

The Real Consumer Value of the United JetBlue Partnership

Here is the consumer value: adding flexibility and personalization to your passenger’s journey. Succinctly put, airline carrier loyalty programs are the path to deriving that consumer value. This is what makes the United JetBlue partnership good for both United and JetBlue passengers, because customers are getting more paths on which they can consume value.

So what is loyalty, really, from the customer standpoint? How does a consumer interact with loyalty? They earn it and they redeem it. To make this work, that consumer must continually earn rewards. And they don’t do that only by flying. In fact, more than 60% of frequent flyer miles are now earned through non-flight activities.

But earning is only a piece of the puzzle. From the airline perspective, you need your customers choosing to earn rewards because they actively want to use those rewards. As the airline, it is in your best interest, then, to offer as many options as possible for customers to cash in on earned rewards in ways that keep them connected to you and keep revenue flowing to you.

Back to the consumer. As your consumer uses rewards value, they must continue to accrue more value to break out of the earn-and-burn cycle and move into a network of continuous engagement with your brand.  Typically, this network of earning potential is where airlines struggle. Thus, the introduction of credit cards that offer airline points. Airline affiliated cards make earning and using rewards work for the consumer.

Another massive move to expand the potential for earning is partnerships like the United JetBlue partnership. Because the partnership opens up new airports and new routes for customers who are loyalty program members of one or the other airline, it amplifies customer choice, and keeps them close to your brand even when they are making use of a service your brand previously lacked access to. This includes the East Coast networks of flights that JetBlue brings to the table, and the availability of United flights out of JFK starting in 2027, thanks to the partnership. This is all a significant net gain for customers of both JetBlue and United.

Low-Cost vs. Lifetime Value

But in an economy that faces instability, the question remains, why not simply design your revenue model around becoming the low-cost carrier? For starters, because that model is not as simple as it might seem. But, more importantly, because it does not work. We echo Scott Kirby’s comments from at the WSJ Future of Everything Festival last week, when he said the low-cost carrier model does not work because passengers do not fly the low-cost airline regularly. Remember, airlines derive value from loyalty. And lifetime value is the holy grail of sustained revenue.

This reminds me of a joke we used to tell at JetBlue, back in the day: raise your hand if you’ve ever flown Spirit; raise your hand if you’ll do it again. It’s the do it again that presents airlines with the opportunity to benefit from customer lifetime value, built in large part through loyalty programs, but not limited to those programs. It warrants mentioning that things are changing for Spirit, too. Long known as the low-cost airline, Spirit is shifting to focus more on front-of-plane experience and front-of-plane revenue, with positive effects on their bottom line.

How to Build Lifetime Customer Value in a Partnership Scenario

The Petrova Experience has proven the revenue impact of the lifetime value of customer happiness across industries. In workshops with the New Jersey Tourism Board, we helped design the path to turn one-time visitors to destination ambassadors. We have led conversations with the FIFA World Cup 2026™ New York New Jersey Host Committee on leveraging lifetime value starting with a single fan experience. And we have worked in the aviation space for years to design seamless passenger experiences that enable moments of discovery along the customer journey that create commercial opportunities for airlines.

Lifetime customer value starts with a customer-first mindset. At the top of the article, we mentioned that the partnership offers opportunities for better disruption management, which is keenly important for airlines. When an airline prioritizes customer recovery, it builds loyalty. Further, as an airline, you can amplify loyalty benefits, especially when you are working with reciprocal loyalty like United and JetBlue will now be able to do, by prioritizing recovery of elite status flyers.

Customer Recovery as Lifetime Value Driver

As we all know, though, customer recovery through disruption is challenging in the complex aviation environment. In order to make customer recovery actionable, you must act on a robust customer experience strategy. And that strategy must be supported by customer-first technology that empowers employee teams to deliver relevant, timely solutions to your customers.

For airlines, in particular, this requires building, maintaining, and utilizing a robust CRM. If you have worked with a firm like ours, you know that when your CRM works in a customer-first way, you can action customer recovery so it is fast, personalized, and meaningful. You do this when you leverage data and technology tools, along with hospitality standards to know what, when, and how to address painpoints along the customer journey, from small value-add moments to experience saving-efforts in disruption scenarios.

For more on how to drive revenue across the passenger journey, contact us. And add your name to the invitation list for our summer revenue webinar for airline executives, July 9.