If you reside in Charlotte, Houston, or Salt Lake City and are a hub captive passenger, you’re limited to flying on the leading airline that serves your local airport or taking a connecting flight through a different airline’s hub. In some cases, you may have the option to take a point-to-point flight with a low-cost carrier.
However, if you live in a city that is a popular destination, you’ll likely have the luxury of choosing between two, three, four, or even more airlines offering non-stop flights to various cities across the United States. That’s our situation because Orlando International Airport has flights on numerous airlines to most US and international destinations.
I’m searching for flights to San Juan, PR, and I quickly searched MCO’s Wikipedia page. I wasn’t aware that San Juan is second only to Atlanta as the most popular destination from Orlando. Four airlines fly between the two cities: jetBlue, Southwest, Spirit and Frontier.
Maps generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.
Choosing an airline
As our flight was still several months away, I had to consider whether the airline would still be operating and, if so, what the chances were that they might discontinue the MCO-SJU route. I don’t think any of these airlines are at the point of ceasing operations, but I’d like to avoid any complications if possible.
It’s a three-hour flight to Puerto Rico, so we want to pick an airline with comfortable seats. Since we’re going to bring suitcases, I also had to consider paying baggage fees.
While we’ve flown with all of these airlines, choosing Spirit would require paying for the Big Front Seat or getting a Premium Bundle from Frontier to have a comfortable trip.
I have the JetBlue Plus co-brand credit card, which provides free checked bags. With Spirit or Frontier, I could pay the bag fees with my Ritz-Carlton card and have the charges reimbursed from my Air Travel credit. Southwest also offers free checked bags and apparently has no plans to eliminate this benefit.
I also wanted to book with points because it’s easier to cancel or change flights if our plans change. Only Southwest and JetBlue are programs where you can transfer points from bank programs, so I focused on these two.
Why I picked JetBlue
JetBlue is the largest airline operating out of San Juan airport, so I figure there’s the least chance of the airline removing the Orlando flights from the schedule. JetBlue also has the most comfortable planes flying the route, using a combination of its A320 and A321 aircraft.
Southwest was never on our list because the prices were double what JetBlue was charging for similar flights. If we couldn’t have made JetBlue work, I think my next choice would have been Spirit if the Big Front Seat was available.
Final Thought
I’ve decided to book our flight to San Juan, PR, with JetBlue. Their extensive presence at San Juan airport, comfortable aircraft, and the benefits provided by my JetBlue Plus co-brand credit card make it the best choice. I appreciate the ability to book with points and the peace of mind of knowing that there’s a strong likelihood of maintaining the route
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