27-01 Queens Plaza North | Long Island City, NY 11101 | 718-286-7900 

April 29, 2015 

The Honorable John F. Kerry 

US Department of State 

2201 C Street, NW 

Washington, DC 20520 

The Honorable Anthony Foxx 

Department of Transportation 

1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, 9th Floor 

Washington, DC 20590 

The Honorable Penny S Pritzker 

Department of Commerce 

1401 Constitution Avenue, NW 

Washington, DC 20230 

Dear Secretary Kerry, Secretary Foxx and Secretary Pritzker: 

On behalf of the nearly 17,000 crewmembers of JetBlue Airways, New York’s Hometown 

AirlineTM, and following up on my letter in January strongly supporting our nation’s Open Skies 

policy, I am writing to express JetBlue’s support for the growth plans of our international 

aviation partners to the United States and oppose any restrictions on this Open Skies enabled 

expansion. 

One of JetBlue’s international code share partner airlines, Emirates, recently announced new 

service connecting their hub at Dubai, the world’s largest international hub, to JetBlue’s focus 

city in Orlando, Florida. Emirates also announced, following last year’s successful launch of 

Dubai service to JetBlue’s northeast focus city of Boston, a doubling of their daily Dubai-Boston 

service. Finally, Emirates announced an upgrade to its New York-Milan fifth freedom service by 

adding seats with an A380 aircraft from JetBlue’s JFK focus city. 

This is all very positive news for JetBlue, our crewmembers and shareholders and precisely the 

type of domestic job expansion and economic growth our government envisioned when it crafted 

our international aviation policy of Open Skies nearly a quarter century ago. 

Emirates new and increased operations, like those of other foreign carriers operating to the 

United States, are precisely what will be needed in order to achieve President Obama’s goal to 

grow international visitors to the United States. In 2012, recognizing that international visitors to 

the United States spend on average $4500 per visit, President Obama announced the National 

Travel and Tourism Strategy and set the ambitious goal of growing our international visitors 

from today’s annual 70 million to 100 million by 2021. The President stated of international 

visitors “They rent cars, stay in hotels, eat in our restaurants. . . ”1

 and fostering, not freezing 

                                                            

1 Obama, Barack. “Remarks by the President on Creating Jobs Through Tourism.” Baseball Hall of Fame,

Cooperstown, New York. 22, May 2014. Speech Transcript. White House Briefing Room Website. 23 April 2015.
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successful examples of America’s Open Skies policy is a cornerstone of this Presidential effort. 

In JetBlue’s hometown of New York City, over 54 million visitors arrived in 2013, with 11.4 

million of those visitors coming from other countries. That year direct visitor spending totaled 

$38.8 billion. This spending supported over 348,000 jobs and generated $9.7 billion in taxes. 

Against the backdrop of America’s windfall of increased flights bringing overseas visitors and 

generating economic activity and US travel and tourism jobs, it is concerning that America’s 

three largest airlines have joined to urge a rush to judgment based upon their allegations while 

they seek an immediate extra-bilateral freeze on further Open Skies sanctioned growth. The 

views of the three complaining US carriers, one of which, Delta, ironically enjoys a tremendous 

fifth-freedom franchise of its own in Japan, do not represent the views of entire US aviation 

industry. JetBlue and several other passenger and cargo airlines have a different perspective on 

Open Skies and the competitive benefits they produce.

Each time one of our 35 international partners operates a flight to the United States, JetBlue 

benefits with new customers. For example, when Emirates, Turkish Airlines or Japan Airlines 

arrive at JetBlue’s focus city at JFK and customers connect onto our network, JetBlue increases 

traffic flow, has a need to add capacity and as a result, adds direct jobs just as others (taxi 

operators, hotels, restaurants etc...) add indirect jobs. At our focus city in Boston, many of our 

international partners have launched or announced new services including Turkish, Hainan, 

Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, El Al and Emirates. Each of these new international flights not 

only adds direct aviation sector jobs in Boston and indirect travel and tourism jobs in the region, 

but also strengthens JetBlue’s ability to launch new competitive domestic routes such as BostonDetroit based on the large flow of arriving international connecting customers. In the year since 

JetBlue entered the former Delta monopoly route BOS-DTW, fares have fallen nearly 40 percent 

and daily passenger traffic has more than doubled. All of this activity increases job growth. 

Similarly, at our Orlando focus city, our domestic network has grown as we have added 

international connecting partners including Emirates, Icelandair and others. 

Nothing prevents US carriers with the requisite fleet, such as Delta, United and American, from 

adding international services to any Open Skies nation including those located in the Gulf region. 

In fact, Delta, American and United have largely elected not to serve the Gulf region as well as a 

majority of beyond markets in the Indian sub-continent where the Gulf carriers find much of 

their originating traffic bound for the United States. Rather than fly to either region, they instead 

have asked your Departments to accept their assertions as fact and rely upon these “facts” as a 

basis for unilaterally freezing further Open Skies growth that feeds traffic and jobs to JetBlue 

and other domestic airlines. Such a request is at odds with the foundation of America’s Open 

Skies policy and the clear dispute-resolution language contained in each of our bilateral 

agreements. 

 
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America’s carefully crafted Open Skies agreements all contain ample dispute resolution 

language. No amount of lobbying or spending on advertisements can alter the legal grounds by 

which our nation chooses to engage with other nations. JetBlue urges your departments to 

follow the established rule of law as found in the language of our current agreements and 

continue on the path you have begun by adhering to the opening of public dockets. Only such a 

course will allow the allegations to be directly addressed by those nations so accused and ensure 

that the lawful process of our treaties be followed without any artificial rush to judgment. 

I look forward to further discussing this matter with you and your colleagues on a future visit to 

Washington and thank you for your consideration of JetBlue’s views. 

Sincerely, 

Robin Hayes 

President and CEO