I don’t think this is terribly surprising, but Hawaiian Airlines and JetBlue Airways will be discontinuing their loyalty collaboration in the coming months…
In this post:
Hawaiian & JetBlue cutting ties by March 2026
Hawaiian and JetBlue have announced that their loyalty partnership will be coming to an end. As it stands, the two airlines offer reciprocal opportunities to earn and redeem points.
It’ll no longer be possible to book flights under this partnership as of September 30, 2025, and travel must be completed by March 31, 2026. The deadline to submit any retroactive credit requests is also March 31, 2026.
The two airlines have had a rather casual partnership dating back to 2012. Historically, neither airline has belonged to one of the global alliances, so the airlines have collaborated, given their complementary route networks. JetBlue doesn’t fly to Hawaii, so the idea is that the two airlines have had an interline partnership, so that you could book travel on both airlines.
Furthermore, in recent years we’ve seen JetBlue TrueBlue increasingly roll out award redemptions on partner airlines (a long overdue development), so it has also been possible to redeem TrueBlue points on Hawaiian, and vice versa.
This partnership ending is no surprise
While the partnership between Hawaiian and JetBlue was never particularly close, I don’t think it’s a surprise that this is ending. Alaska Air Group acquired Hawaiian, and of course this is causing everything about Hawaiian to change:
- Hawaiian’s wide bodies are increasingly being moved from Honolulu (HNL) to Seattle (SEA), so that Alaska can launch long haul service
- With Hawaiian and Alaska now coordinating their schedules and belonging to the same airline group, the preference is for Hawaiian customers to connect to Alaska flights within the lower 48
- Hawaiian is expected to join the oneworld alliance, and will then have domestic feed with both Alaska and American
- JetBlue is now launching a partnership with United, which has more upside with JetBlue, and United also has tons of connectivity to Hawaii
So there’s clearly not much upside to this partnership anymore. While many partnerships aren’t mutually exclusive, I suspect this is an area whether neither airline (particularly Hawaiian, via Alaska Air Group) sees much benefit anymore.
Now, in theory I’d say there’s merit to Alaska Air Group eventually acquiring JetBlue and becoming more of a national competitor, but that’s a topic for another time. 😉
Bottom line
Hawaiian and JetBlue are ending their loyalty partnership, offering reciprocal points earning and redemption options. This partnership will end for new bookings as of September 30, 2025, and for travel as of March 31, 2026.
I don’t think this is terribly surprising, given Hawaiian being acquired by Alaska Air Group, and JetBlue launching a partnership with United. Still, it’s a shame to see JetBlue lose a partner redemption option.
What do you make of Hawaiian and JetBlue cutting ties?
Alaska acquiring JetBlue would actually make sense and they have mostly different bases so they couldn’t claim it creates overlap. They both offer a strong product as well
“Project Barbell”
Oh heck no. Another 'Project Barbell' is definitely not what AS HA needs.
Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.
there aren't a whole lot of choices left if AS wants to grow to be a true nationwide carrier anytime in the next 25 years.
I think your comment about Alaska buying JetBlue down the line is spot on
Whenever it becomes clear that regulators would approve such a merger, I think they should go for it. Especially now that it's not clear what the future of Southwest is, I wonder if a combined Alaska/JetBlue/Hawaiian could challenge Southwest for the role of top top domestic focused airline in the US.
There are more than a few omaat commenters...
I think your comment about Alaska buying JetBlue down the line is spot on
Whenever it becomes clear that regulators would approve such a merger, I think they should go for it. Especially now that it's not clear what the future of Southwest is, I wonder if a combined Alaska/JetBlue/Hawaiian could challenge Southwest for the role of top top domestic focused airline in the US.
There are more than a few omaat commenters who can probably say quite quickly to what extent they combined Alaska/ jetblue/ Hawaiian could realistically challenge Southwest, so hopefully they'll chime in here. Perhaps, it's not only about challenging Southwest, but they could even cause headaches for the big three as well.
I would also think that a combined JetBlue/ Alaska/ Hawaiian would have a better shot of being able to profitably fly Hawaiians wide-body planes
the real "hmmm" will happen when AS starts thinning its list of partners down to oneworld partners.
They, like AS, have slapped anyone and everyone's code on their flights and now realize that doing so might actually hurt their inability to start their own international service.