3. What happens if you miss your connection I pretty good about requesting 2 hr minim but I am not the one paying for my flight this summer
If you miss a connecting flight, JetBlue will put you on their next flight. As long as you were on your first flight, there will be no additional fees involved.
In the event of a major issue like weather shutting down an entire region or a massive computer crash, here's something to consider:
In the airline industry, some carriers have interline agreements. An interline agreement allows an airline to transfer their tickets to another airline electronically. If a flight gets canceled, an airline has the option to transfer affected passengers to a different airline in order to minimize delays and hassles for those passengers. It's not a perfect system, but it does provide more options when something unexpected happens.
Unfortunately, JetBlue does not have interline agreements with any other domestic airlines. That means if your flight is canceled, the only thing JetBlue will do is put you on the next available flight. They can't put you on a different airline.
None of the so-called "low cost carriers" use interline agreements. Examples: Southwest, JetBlue, Spirit, Allegiant, Frontier. However, the impact of lack of interline agreements depends on the size of the airline.
- Southwest: 737 planes flying to 101 destinations
- JetBlue: 234 planes to 106 destinations
- Spirit: 105 planes to 60 destinations
- Allegiant: 90 planes to 105 destinations
- Frontier: 69 planes to 62 destinations
Basically, if you have more planes, it's easier to react when one of them is unavailable. (The same concept applies to crew. If you only have 100 pilots, it's harder to replace one than when you have 1000 pilots.) Due to their size, the lack of interline agreements is not much of a factor for Southwest. While it might be an issue with JetBlue, it's not a big enough one for me to not fly them. Personally, I won't fly Spirit, Allegiant, or Frontier in part due to this issue.