I’m not here to advocate for making the passenger experience less pleasant. However, as JetBlue continues to try to return to profitability, the airline should be doing everything it can to increase revenue. It seems to me like the airline is leaving something pretty obvious on the table, and it involves one of the carrier’s best features.
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JetBlue’s free Wi-Fi is in a league of its own
Inflight Wi-Fi has come a long way. We’re increasingly seeing airlines introduce free Wi-Fi, though the reality is that this is an area where JetBlue was the true market innovator. In 2013, JetBlue introduced free Wi-Fi — known as Fly-Fi — throughout its fleet.
This was simply unheard of at the time, especially when you consider that JetBlue was one of the first major airlines to partner with Viasat, which offers among the fastest inflight connectivity. JetBlue lets you connect to inflight Wi-Fi with one click, with as many devices as you’d like.
Even to this day, JetBlue is the only large airline to feature free Wi-Fi on every single plane. That’s one of the things that makes me sad about JetBlue’s struggle with profitability — the airline was really innovative in so many ways before other airlines, ranging from seat back entertainment, to Mint business class. Yet consumers aren’t necessarily willing to pay a premium for these investments.
Anyway, this brings me to an easy way that JetBlue can seemingly improve the monetization of its free Wi-Fi, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why JetBlue hasn’t done this already.
JetBlue should limit free Wi-Fi to TrueBlue members
As other airlines have followed JetBlue’s lead with introducing free Wi-Fi, there’s one major thing other airlines have done differently. JetBlue lets travelers connect to free Wi-Fi with one click, with no need to actually be part of the carrier’s TrueBlue loyalty program.
Meanwhile virtually every other airline that has introduced free Wi-Fi requires travelers to be a member of their loyalty program in order to receive access to this. Obviously having to log-in is a mildly annoying extra step, but it’s really smart from the company’s perspective.
If you ask me, JetBlue should limit free Wi-Fi to TrueBlue members. Anyone can sign-up for free — this isn’t about limiting the number of people who use it, but rather it’s about being able to make more money off of those travelers.
Ask any airline executive — customers who are part of the loyalty program are simply more profitable. Not only are they more likely to fly the airline, but it’s also easier to sell them credit cards and other ancillary services.
Heck, many airline executives haven’t even been secretive about the reason that they’re introducing free Wi-Fi, as it’s to increase loyalty program sign-ups. As airlines roll out free Wi-Fi, they see travelers sign-up for the program at a record pace.
Nobody is flying JetBlue specifically because you don’t have to be a member of the loyalty program to unlock the free Wi-Fi. Meanwhile I can 100% guarantee that the airline is missing out on some (potentially meaningful) revenue by not using the opportunity to get more people to join TrueBlue.
Even the most profitable airlines make a large percentage of their profits from their loyalty programs, and hardly make money actually transporting passengers. So it’s imperative that airlines do everything they can to get people to join their loyalty programs.
JetBlue has its biggest hubs in some of the wealthiest cities in the United States. If anything, JetBlue should have among the highest percentage loyalty program revenue of any airline, given the lucrative customer base it has access to.
It’s funny, because JetBlue has such a history of innovation, yet I can’t help but feel that much like with Southwest, the airline is really slow to make what I’d consider to be obvious changes. I mean, just look at how JetBlue now finally plans to introduce first class, though it’s only coming in 2026. Like, Frontier is beating JetBlue to the punch with introducing first class, which… shouldn’t be the case.
Bottom line
JetBlue was the first major airline to offer free Wi-Fi, and continues to be the only large airline in the world to have free Wi-Fi on all aircraft. However, I’d argue the airline is leaving a major revenue opportunity on the table, by not limiting Wi-Fi to loyalty program members.
There’s a reason so many airlines are following JetBlue’s lead with free Wi-Fi, but with the requirement to be a member of the loyalty program. A higher percentage of JetBlue’s revenue should be from its loyalty program, and to me, this seems like an obvious change.
What’s your take on this, from a business perspective? Am I the only one who thinks this seems like it should be an obvious change?
On the other hand, they monetize IFE headphones. Hardly any other carriers do.
But how many people does JetBlue want to force to sign up for their FF program to get free wifi that rarely fly and when they do they book the cheapest fare available on Google flights. They might not fly JetBlue for another five years and maybe never again.
Now the better question would be why isn't JetBlue getting FF signups and monetizing those. That actually gets involved in the selling of names/lists and that has a negative view so that's not a slam dunk.
I feel there are two sides this argument. From a marketing standpoint, I absolutely support the idea and think it’s a great way to foster customer loyalty, and engagement through personalizing the experience. However, as an airline passenger, I feel that the JetBlue model is superior. Being based out of BOS and having tried the free Wi-Fi offering of both B6 and DL, I get the feeling that DL seemly wants to track the every...
I feel there are two sides this argument. From a marketing standpoint, I absolutely support the idea and think it’s a great way to foster customer loyalty, and engagement through personalizing the experience. However, as an airline passenger, I feel that the JetBlue model is superior. Being based out of BOS and having tried the free Wi-Fi offering of both B6 and DL, I get the feeling that DL seemly wants to track the every move of their customers in the hopes of getting them to spend more. This is reflected in the literature and press releases they put out about their Delta Sync offering. Well at the end of the day is not a huge annoyance, I personally would prefer not to see B6 go down that path.
You might be right, but this isn't a slam-dunk. On average, passengers who are part of the loyalty program spend more... sure. But at least in part, that's because passengers who are inclined to spend more are more likely to find it worthwhile to join the loyalty program. It doesn't follow that forcing an infrequent flier to join the loyalty program just to connect to wifi will result in any more revenue from that passenger. Maybe it will--but hardly a sure thing.
Who's to say it's not? Monetization can occur via bundling. That is, embedding the cost of WiFi in the ticket price. Just because a charge for WiFi is not a separate and visible charge (an unbundled charge) doesn't mean it's not monetizing it.
Why doesn't Emirates monetize champagne in first class? It's embedded in the ticket price.
@ Lee -- I didn't say the airline isn't monetizing it at all, I posed the question of why JetBlue doesn't *better* monetize Wi-Fi. Ultimately JetBlue is losing money, so needs to find new revenue streams. This seems like an obvious one.