JetBlue formally retires its smallest, most dated airplane

JetBlue clients can rejoice — possibly with a splash of nostalgia. The airline simply bid farewell to its smallest, most outdated fleet of planes.

With a brief flight on Tuesday from New York to Boston, the provider formally marked the retirement of its Embraer 190, the 100-seat regional jet that had been a staple of its East Coast service for twenty years.

It is the primary plane JetBlue has totally phased out in its quarter-century of flying.

It was additionally a time machine, of types. Passengers who boarded bought an immediate throwback to the 2000s, with legacy screens at each seat. Onboard Tuesday’s flight to doc the plane’s retirement, I may nearly hear the early-century ESPN theme music that may’ve been blaring via my headphones throughout any JetBlue flight of the late 2000s.

However in 2025, the E190 cabin now not evoked the “low cost stylish” vibe that outlined JetBlue’s rise on the flip of the century — or the fashionable aesthetic discovered on board its newer planes.

A 20-year run for JetBlue’s smallest plane

JetBlue launched service on the E190 20 years in the past, turning into the primary airline to fly the Brazilian planemaker’s then-new plane and, within the course of, debuting maybe one of the best economic system expertise provided by any U.S. airline on a regional jet.

The plane additionally turned a linchpin of JetBlue’s community.

Six years in the past, the provider operated greater than 120,000 flights with the jet, in line with knowledge from aviation analytics agency Cirium — whilst JetBlue obtained newer, way more fashionable planes with touchscreens and lie-flat seats.

Final yr, JetBlue executives confirmed the summer season 2025 would mark the top of the E190’s run.

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And the official finish got here on Tuesday — however not with no little sentimentality.

Crewmembers from the flight deck and cabin signed a banner commemorating the top of a airplane that carried tens of millions of passengers over almost twenty years — particularly out and in of JetBlue’s Boston Logan Worldwide Airport (BOS) hub, the place leaders say it was integral to unlocking new locations for the airline.

“The E190 gave us one thing unimaginable: the flexibility to develop with flexibility and recent locations,” CEO Joanna Geraghty mentioned, talking Tuesday in New York. “It gave us Boston.”

JetBlue E190 retirement flight

Boston, due to this fact, marked a becoming last vacation spot for the airplane, which stuffed up with JetBlue dignitaries for the ultimate, aptly-numbered Flight 190 from John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport (JFK).

“A extremely particular flight,” mentioned Capt. Warren Christie, JetBlue’s chief working officer, who piloted Tuesday’s flight — celebrating each the retirement of each the plane and his personal flying profession.

Flight B6 190 provided loads of reminders of why JetBlue is shifting on from this jet, from the growing old leisure techniques to past-their-prime seats and on-board Wi-Fi that did not work in the course of the flight.

There’s additionally a matter of the overhead bins, too small for a lot of vacationers’ baggage in 2025: “We’ll have loads of gate checks,” I heard one agent say with apply (and, I detected, a touch of nostalgia).

Nonetheless, it was a historcal second. And JetBlue celebrated with commemorative tokens at each seat. Passengers responded in type with applause — each at takeoff and at touchdown, which got here after simply over a half-hour of flying time on a blue-sky day.

On the bottom in New England, JetBlue staffers and lots of passenger (this one included) had the prospect to step outdoors the plane, decide up a everlasting marker and signal the plane fuselage.

Looming within the background, one gate over: a JetBlue Airbus A220, the way more fashionable and gas environment friendly 140-seat plane that the provider sees because the E190’s worthy successor.

“It’s such a greater buyer expertise than the 190,” JetBlue President Marty St. George mentioned of the A220 at Logan Tuesday. “Not that the 190 was unhealthy. We went from good to actually, actually, actually good. So it is solely going to be higher for our clients.”

JetBlue will proceed to enhance its A220 with its bigger A320 and A321 variant planes, together with its lengthy haul-capable plane which are outfitted with the airline’s latest-generation Mint Suites up entrance.

Planes that do not have Mint at this time will quickly be in line to get outfitted with the provider’s all-new home first-class recliners beginning in 2026.

This E190, in the meantime, will likely be headed to the desert of Arizona on Wednesday.

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