American and JetBlue Partnership Talks End with Lawsuit
American Airlines is ending partnership talks and suing JetBlue “to recover money owed to American following the unwinding of the Northeast Alliance (NEA).”
The news was shared in a letter that was sent to team members from its Vice Chair and Chief Strategy Officer Steve Johnson.
“Ultimately, we were unable to agree on a construct that preserved the benefits of the partnership we envisioned, made sense operationally or financially, or was consistent with the travel rewards and co-branded card business objectives that are so important to our strategy and our customers,” he said in the letter.
American says that it will continue to compete “aggressively in New York and Boston, and we are committed to enhancing our customer proposition in the Northeast. Over the past year, we have added more than 20 new routes from LGA and JFK using the slots returned to us after the NEA ended.”
American Airlines also revealed that it has filed a lawsuit against JetBlue to recover money owed to American following the unwinding of the Northeast Alliance. “We understandably tabled this claim while we were in discussions with JetBlue, but now that those conversations have concluded, we need to address the accounting and reconciliation following the termination of the NEA,” the airline said in its letter.
The lawsuit is seeking monetary relief of more than $1 million, excluding attorney fees and costs from JetBlue, as reported by Reuters.
