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, 9 th 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 le tter in January strongly s upporting our nation’s Open Skies policy, I am writing to express JetBlue’s suppor t 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 part ner 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. Emirat es also announced, following last year’s successful launch of

Dubai service to JetBlue’s northea st focus city of Boston, a doubli ng 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 expansi on 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 ope rations, like those of other fo reign 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 th e United States. In 2012, recognizing that internationa l visitors to the United States spend on average $4500 per vi sit, President Obama announced the National Travel and Tourism Strategy and set the ambitious goal of growing our in ternational visitors from today’s annual 70 million to 100 million by 2021. The President stat ed of international visitors “They rent cars, stay in ho tels, eat in our re staurants. . . ” 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.Page 2

successful examples of America’s Open Skies policy is a cornerstone of this Presidential effort. In JetBlue’s hometown of New York City, ove r 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 join ed to urge a rush to judgment based upon their al legations 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 ow n 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 intern ational 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 fo cus city in Boston, many of our international partners have launched or annou nced new services including Turkish, Hainan, Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, El Al and Emirat es. Each of these new international flights not only adds direct aviation sector j obs in Boston and indirect travel and tourism jobs in the region, but also strengthens JetBlue’s ability to launc h 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 fa llen nearly 40 percent and daily passenger traffic has mo re than doubled. All of this activity increases job growth. Similarly, at our Orlando focus city, our dome stic network has grown as we have added international connecting pa rtners including Emirates, Icelandair and others.

Nothing prevents US carriers with the requisite fleet, such as Delta, United and American, from adding international services to a ny Open Skies nation including thos e 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-c ontinent 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 assert ions 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. Su ch 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.Page 3

America’s carefully crafted Op en 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 othe r 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 c onsideration of Je tBlue’s views.

Sincerely,

Robin Hayes

President and CEO