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Airfare Deals / JetBlue / Airline News / BOS / IAD / BWI / DCA / Boston Travel / Washington DC Travel / LCCs / AYCJ / → All Tags

Buying Flights in Bulk: JetBlue's New $699 'Go Pack'

Buying flights in bulk—is this the next new thing? Virgin America tried it out last year with a Gilt City deal that saw a pack of 3 roundtrip short-haul flights going for $427, all the way on up to 10 long-haul roundtrips for $3,585. Well, the originators of the All-You-Can-Jet idea—JetBlue—are kicking off spring travel with a bulk deal of their very own. The only catch? You have to really love flying between Boston and Washington DC.

The deal is quite simple:
· Buy a "Go Pack" of 10 one-way flights between Boston (BOS) and all Washington, DC airports—Washington-Reagan (DCA), Washington-Dulles (IAD), Baltimore (BWI).
· Pay $699, plus $7 in taxes for each flight (so it's $776 total).
· Fly your 10 flights between April 23 through June 27, 2012.
· Earn a lump sum 4,200 TrueBlue miles

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Awesome Stuff / AYCJ / AYCJ 2011 / JetBlue / Airline News / BluePass / Travel Deals / BOS / LGB / → All Tags

All-You-Can-Jet Pass Evolution: Score JetBlue's 'BluePass' for Three Solid Months of Flights

Whoa whoa whoa. One month ago when JetBlue announced that the famous All-You-Can-Jet Pass wouldn't live to see a third annual run, there were a lot of frowning intrepid travelers wondering what the heck they were going to do with their autumn now. Well, those frowns are turning upside-down at today's hot-off-the-press news that JetBlue is introducing a reworked AYCJ, a departure airport-specific BluePass.

Don't freak and get out your credit card yet; the BluePass is not for casual fliers, nosiree. You've got to be based in either the Long Beach/LA or Boston areas (or willing to make the airports your base). The BluePass will last not just one month like AYCJ, but three months, and the cheapest of the three BluePass options goes for $1,299. Now, the nitty-gritty:

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AYCJ / AYCJ 2011 / All-You-Can-Jet Pass / JetBlue / Airfare Sales / Budget Travel / → All Tags

No JetBlue All-You-Can-Jet Pass for 2011, You Say? Do a DIY AYCJ!

The Jaunted HQ flag flies at half-mast today since yesterday, when JetBlue revealed they'd not be bringing back the popular All-You-Can-Jet Pass for 2011. This shocked some of the country's (and world's) dedicated budget travelers and they collectively cried a single tear, erased penciled-in plans for fall, and commiserated on Twitter. @Andrewhyde's remark on Twitter yesterday even made a Top Tweet: "All You Can Jet was the most innovative thing out of the airline industry since trying to be profitable."

Although we're still holding the hope that the AYCJ Pass will return in some form in the future*, for now there are ways to get your travel on and do a sort-of DIY AYCJ:

· Follow @JetBlueCheeps
All former AYCJ-ers should already know this, but JetBlue's deals twitter churns out awesome last-minute fares nearly every Tuesday. Since we know some flyers used their AYCJ passes to travel each weekend and still work somewhat normally, Cheeps are for you. Best of all, you don't have to plan much ahead. Last week, Cheeps had $29 from Las Vegas to Long Beach or $69 from JFK to West Palm Beach. Not too shabby.

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AYCJ 2011 / AYCJ / Jetblue / Airlines / Airline News / Travel News / All-You-Can-Jet Pass / → All Tags

Oh, the Humanity! JetBlue Kills the All-You-Can-Jet Pass for 2011

Can you hear that? If you listen closely to the wind, you'll notice the faint sound of hundreds and hundreds of traveler hearts breaking, as JetBlue today announced that they will not be bringing back the All-You-Can-Jet Pass for 2011. Sad face to the max!

All-You-Can-Jet (or AYCJ as it's fondly called), began in the fall of 2009, when JetBlue shocked and delighted by offering a month of unlimited travel around their route network for $599 (plus international taxes, if you island-hopped). We even remember the day it was announced—August 12, 2009—aka the day we pretty much hyperventilated through. Then, last year, the pass returned with more options: $699 to travel any day of the AYCJ month, or $499 to stick to the 5 off-peak days. People still went bonkers for it.

But now, an email has hit the inboxes of former AYCJers, letting them know the sad 2011 decision:

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Flight Attendants / JetBlue / AYCJ 2010 / AYCJ / LCCs / → All Tags

How to Sleep With a Flight Attendant (And What They Think About You)

Our lesson learned: not all JetBlue FAs will go Slater on you, but that doesn’t mean you should treat them badly

You may want to address any issues you have with anger or jealousy before you read the rest of this post, because if you’ve ever had any flight attendant-related fantasies, you may well want to hurt us. Why? Because we slept with a flight attendant the other week.

No, not in the Biblical sense, of course. Perish the thought! We mean it literally. We befriended a JetBlue flight attendant on a flight, and she ended up being so nice that when we found ourselves alone in her home town, she invited us to stay with her. On her waterbed. Yes, the story really is that good.

It took place last month. We were on our first flight of All You Can Jet, riding from Vegas to New York, and Jennifer – we won’t tell you her second name, in case you try to stalk steal her from us – was working the flight. We liked her instantly – she was friendly but professional, approachable without being in your face. She was, we remember thinking, the perfect person to get us off the ground for the next 30 days of flying.

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First Person Flight Reviews / JetBlue / AYCJ 2010 / AYCJ / → All Tags

Another AYCJ 2010 Success Story: 'I Paid $499 to Fly 18,969 Miles'

One more All You Can Jet Pass story for good measure. This one comes from Dan, a good friend and reader of Jaunted. Enjoy!

I flew 18,969 mileson JetBlue's AYCJ-5 2010 Pass between September 7 and October 7. Some more fun numbers: I flew into/out of 8 airports, visited 5 States and 3 countries, spent 10 nights in hotels, sat on 13 different airplanes, had a hell of a lot of fun, and used $2,510.07 worth of airfare. How much did it cost me? $499. That's right; I paid $499 to fly 18,969 miles, all while still managing to work 4 days a week.

This is my 2nd year doing the AYCJ Pass, and I had so much fun last year that I jumped on the opportunity to purchase it again.

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AYCJ 2010 / All-You-Can-Jet Pass / JetBlue / Flight Deals / Airline News / LCCs / AYCJ / → All Tags

The Last Day of AYCJ: The Foreigner Out to 'See America' Speaks

My AYCJ experience was different from that of many others because a) I am British and b) I wanted to use this as an excuse to see parts of America that I knew I never would otherwise. I remember reading about AYCJ last year and thinking, “If they do it again next year, and you are in America, you will never forgive yourself if you don’t do it”. So I did.

The timing wasn't ideal—I had to work (remotely) right through the month and, of course, I ended up having more work to do than I had in the past three months combined. So there were a lot of 5am starts, and a devastating Saturday night spent chained to my computer in New Orleans. But even though that meant I had to spend longer in each place and see fewer cities, I still managed a fair deal.

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AYCJ 2010 / AYCJ / JetBlue / Airlines / Airline News / LGB / LCC / → All Tags

The Last Day of AYCJ: Will There Be a 2011 Pass?

AYCJ 2010 officially ends this evening, which—all things considered—is kind of a huge bummer. JetBlue's All You Can Jet website is displaying a sad banner that says "we're sorry... the last date of travel is October 6." Tragic. Potentially even more tragic is that there's no promise of an AYCJ 2011 on the site.

So will there be a third annual AYCJ? It depends on whether the LCC thinks that the program has been a success. There are easy ways to imagine why it might be a loser for them. Certainly if all of the AYCJ flights were purchased by the passengers at full price, JetBlue would have made more money.

And it's not like the airline is straightforwardly getting new customers, since most of the people who buy the passes are travel junkies who buy tickets based on price and already search JetBlue. But that logic can be a little deceptive because there's no reason to believe that those full-priced tickets—the ones that get used "for free" by AYCJ pass holders—would have been purchased. Those seats may have just gone to waste.

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Business Travel / All-You-Can-Jet Pass / AYCJ 2010 / AYCJ / JetBlue / → All Tags

The Last Day of AYCJ: The Most Boring All You Can Jetter Speaks

I bought the $499 AYCJ-5 pass back in August with the explicit goal of becoming the most boring AYCJ'er the skies have ever seen. Huh? Well, the pass was purchased for my business travel. With the idea of condensing two months of travel into two weeks, I had big plans to first save money and second, create more time.

The saving money part was easy to document. I knew that in the months of September I needed to travel from RDU to Boston, to New York twice, and to Las Vegas. A quick web airfare search back in August showed me that buying either many one-way trips or one big multi-destination trip was going to cost me somewhere between $900 - $1200 depending on a variety of factors (airline, times of flights, day of flights, etc).

Since JetBlue's pass was going to save me approximately $600, the decision to buy it was a no-brainer. Furthermore, buying the pass would allow me more flexibility in scheduling my travel, and the ability to come back home for a couple days in between my two main trips. Even when I added in the cost of renting a car at one of my destinations, the AYCJ-5 was saving me over $500.

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JetBlue / LGB / IAD / LAX / AYCJ 2010 / AYCJ / → All Tags

AYCJ 2010 Begins to Wind Down

In an effort to avoid a repeat of the insane disaster from our last AYCJ 2010 trip, which involved what ought to have been a straightforward IAD to JFK to LAX itinerary, we booked a direct flight between IAD and LGB last Thursday. Sure Long Beach is a lot farther from Jaunted's Los Angeles HQ than is LAX, and sure the drive is that much more annoying.

But as we pulled into the gate into the quaint aviation-related outpost that is LGB, the CNN feed on JetBlue's wonderful Direct TV announced that there were five-hour delays at JFK because of the torrential downpour. Suddenly the extra drive seemed kind of charming. Veritably scenic, in fact.

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Travel Tweet of the Week / Twitter / Twitter Travel / AYCJ 2010 / AYCJ / → All Tags

Tweet of the Week: That's So Meta.

We love Tuesdays. Why, you ask? Because the day brings many travel tips and quips as "Travel Tuesday" on Twitter, and we're going to share our favorite with you. Got an avid travel twitterer we should follow? Let us know.

There are many excellent arguments for flying on planes that have seat-back TVs for each seat. One basic one is that you get to watch whatever you want, not like the overheard screen-played X-Men movie through which we suffered on an Alitalia Chicago to Milan flight. Nope. Instead, with seat-back TVs, you can watch stuff like The Simpsons, or even—if you're on an airline with satellite TV, like JetBlue—the season premiere of the show, at the same time as those at home are watching it.

This was what happened to tweeter @GirlOnFerry, who usually tweets her commute on the Staten Island Ferry, but this month is supplementing it with tales of the adventures she's having with a JetBlue All You Can Jet pass. The most recent:

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Travel Snapshot / Airport WiFi / JetBlue / AYCJ 2010 / All-You-Can-Jet Pass / Airports / JFK / LCCs / Wifi / AYCJ / → All Tags

A Connected Traveler's Dream: Rows Upon Rows of Shiny Plugs at JFK

If you're on the All-You-Can-Jet JetBlue pass like several of the Jaunted staff (disclosure: who totally all paid in full for their own), you'll undoubtedly end up making a connection through JFK this season. Even if you're not on a pass, but will probably find yourself moving through New York, it behooves you to know about this row of plugs and computers, in the back of the terminal between gates 23 and 24. Thanks to new airline regulations, after all, you might find yourself spending quite a bit of time here if you spend any time at all.

Rows like this one, which are bathed in JetBlue's free and fast WiFi, are actually found in several places throughout JetBlue's T5 terminal. There are two just on this side of the structure, along the row of gates here. This one is placed far enough back, though, that it almost always has empty seats. Plus if you squint your eyes toward the back, and focus on that small Samsung charging station, you can just make out the bar that's directly behind it. By virtue of also being in the back of the terminal, is also often deserted. Useful!

So don't be afraid of moving through the whole terminal before posting up and plugging in. It's not like the pace of flights leaving JFK is exactly overwhelming, so you should have plenty of time to make it back to your gate from just about anywhere in T5.

[Photo: Omri Ceren / Jaunted]

Related Stories:
· All-You-Can-Jet Pass [Jaunted]
· AYCJ 2010 [Jaunted]