The Blue Sky partnership between United and JetBlue is now officially live with the ability to a) earn mileage with either airline when flying the other (revenue based both ways) and b) redeem miles between carriers, meaning you can redeem your JetBlue points for travel on United and vice versa.
They also mention that you will *soon* be able to get loyalty benefits as a United elite flying JetBlue or a JetBlue Mosaic member flying United. That part isn’t live yet.
Naturally the second I saw this, I started running searches so find the arbitrage. Specifically, I was hoping to find at least one route where United could book JetBlue Mint for a deal (like you can using JAL miles) or booking United via JetBlue (for instance, like you can using Air India miles from Rove Miles – p.s. only 8 days left to get 1,500 free Rove Miles just by signing up!).
Unfortunately, neither wish came true.
When using United miles to fly JetBlue, the prices seem fixed. I could only find economy prices (see below) and nothing was great.
On JetBlue, it was even worse. I was seeing routes with JetBlue offering awards at like 4,000 points but the United flight was 15,000 points. And then it seems that JetBlue is pricing United flights semi-dynamically. From what I can tell there is a saver rate and then additional availability at dynamic prices.
There is very little JetBlue Mint space available to United. I tried finding JFK to Aruba for a data point but looked out day by day for four months without striking gold. Same for JFK-AMS. I did find JFK-LAX, priced at a crazy 80,000 UA miles one way. By contrast, JAL MileageBank would price that at 42,000 miles one way or 60,000 round trip.
I would say that the best part of this is for someone simply flush in the points currency of one airline or the other, as this does absolutely open more options.
But for us arbitragers, I think it might be a bust. Let me know if you find any sweet spots!
Thoughts?
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