TAP Air Portugal and JetBlue are having a happy marriage, even if it’s only a codeshare relationship. TAP credits JetBlue’s connecting passengers with filling its planes on trans-Atlantic routes, a business that’s grown tremendously in the past year.
TAP flies to Boston, New York, Newark and Miami from Lisbon, and reports 85% passenger loads on those flights. It says 30% of the Boston passengers come from JetBlue; at JFK the figure is 20%. Overall, TAP says 17% of its trans-Atlantic business comes from JetBlue, which sells codeshare tickets from over 30 U.S. cities.
Ironically, the codeshare alliance has a human godfather. David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue is now the majority owner of TAP. He’s also the founder of another JetBlue codeshare partner, Brazil’s Azul Airlines, and was a co-founder of Canada’s WestJet.
