JetBlue formally retires its smallest, most dated airplane

JetBlue clients can rejoice — possibly with a touch of nostalgia. The airline simply bid farewell to its smallest, most outdated fleet of planes.

With a brief flight on Tuesday from New York to Boston, the provider formally marked the retirement of its Embraer 190, the 100-seat regional jet that had been a staple of its East Coast service for 20 years.

It is the primary plane JetBlue has totally phased out in its quarter-century of flying.

It was additionally a time machine, of types. Passengers who boarded received an on the spot throwback to the 2000s, with legacy screens at each seat. On board Tuesday’s flight to doc the plane’s retirement, I might virtually hear the early-century ESPN theme music that may’ve been blaring by means of my headphones throughout any JetBlue flight of the late 2000s.

However in 2025, the E190 cabin not evoked the “low-cost stylish” vibe that outlined JetBlue’s rise on the flip of the century — or the trendy aesthetic discovered on board its newer planes.

A 20-year run for JetBlue’s smallest plane

JetBlue launched service on the E190 20 years in the past, turning into the primary airline to fly the Brazilian planemaker’s then-new plane and, within the course of, debuting maybe the perfect economic system expertise supplied by any U.S. airline on a regional jet.

The plane additionally grew to become a linchpin of JetBlue’s community.

Six years in the past, the provider operated greater than 120,000 flights with the jet, based on information from aviation analytics agency Cirium — whilst JetBlue obtained newer, much more fashionable planes with touchscreens and lie-flat seats.

Final 12 months, JetBlue executives confirmed the summer season of 2025 would mark the tip of the E190’s run.

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And the official finish got here on Tuesday — however not with no little sentimentality.

Crewmembers from the flight deck and cabin signed a banner commemorating the tip of a airplane that carried thousands and thousands of passengers over practically 20 years — particularly out and in of JetBlue’s Boston Logan Worldwide Airport (BOS) hub, the place leaders say it was integral to unlocking new locations for the airline.

“The E190 gave us one thing unimaginable: the power to develop with flexibility and contemporary locations,” CEO Joanna Geraghty mentioned, talking Tuesday in New York. “It gave us Boston.”

JetBlue E190 retirement flight

Boston, subsequently, marked a becoming ultimate vacation spot for the airplane, which stuffed up with JetBlue dignitaries for the ultimate, aptly-numbered Flight 190 from John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport (JFK).

“A very particular flight,” mentioned Capt. Warren Christie, JetBlue’s chief working officer, who piloted Tuesday’s flight — celebrating each the retirement of each the plane and his personal flying profession.

Flight B6 190 supplied loads of reminders of why JetBlue is transferring on from this jet, from the ageing leisure methods to past-their-prime seats and on-board Wi-Fi that did not work through the flight.

There’s additionally a matter of the overhead bins, too small for a lot of vacationers’ baggage in 2025: “We will have loads of gate checks,” I heard one agent say with follow (and, I detected, a touch of nostalgia).

Nonetheless, it was a historic second. And JetBlue celebrated with commemorative tokens at each seat. Passengers responded in type with applause — each at takeoff and at touchdown, which got here after simply over a half-hour of flying time on a blue-sky day.

On the bottom in New England, JetBlue staffers and plenty of passengers (this one included) had the possibility to step outdoors the plane, choose up a everlasting marker and signal the plane fuselage.

Looming within the background, one gate over: a JetBlue Airbus A220, the much more fashionable and fuel-efficient 140-seat plane that the provider sees because the E190’s worthy successor.

“It’s such a greater buyer expertise than the 190,” JetBlue President Marty St. George mentioned of the A220 at Logan Tuesday. “Not that the 190 was unhealthy. We went from good to essentially, actually, actually good. So it is solely going to be higher for our clients.”

JetBlue will proceed to enrich the A220 with its bigger A320 and A321 variant planes, together with its lengthy haul succesful plane which might be geared up with the airline’s latest-generation Mint Suites up entrance.

Planes that do not have Mint in the present day will quickly be in line to get outfitted with the provider’s all-new home first-class recliners beginning in 2026.

This E190, in the meantime, might be headed to the desert of Arizona on Wednesday.

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