Starting on April 30, JetBlue will operate a direct, year-round flight route between the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City and Providence’s T.F. Green International Airport. Fares for these flights will begin at $49.
The flights will leave Providence for JFK every morning, according to a press release from The Rhode Island Airport Corporation. At night, they will return back to T.F. Green.
The last time the airline operated this route was in March 2009, according to the press release.
The new flights are part of JetBlue’s JetForward Strategy, which aims to build “the best East Coast leisure network,” according to the airline’s website. The company recently added Portland, Maine as a year-round destination and began service in Manchester, New Hampshire just last week. Daily flights between JFK and Hartford, Connecticut will also begin on April 30.
Nora Barré, the executive director of the Downtown Providence Park Network, is optimistic that the new flight route will bring increased tourism to Providence, luring in new visitors looking for a quick getaway.
The increased tourism would benefit the city’s hotels, restaurants and arts scene — generating an overall “positive impact on the city economically,” Barré said.
“In 2023, visitors helped sustain more than 86,000 jobs in Rhode Island, spending $5.6 billion and generating $935 million in state and local tax revenue,” Matthew Touchette, spokesperson for the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, told The Herald.
Touchette added that the new flights will also support local businesses by helping them establish global partnerships with both customers and suppliers.
Rhode Island is a “hidden gem,” Barré said. The new “affordable and direct” flight route will help uncover everything Providence has to offer, she added.
JFK offers regular nonstop flights to nearly 200 cities and 80 countries across the globe, according to the RIAC press release. The new route will allow more international visitors to travel to Providence, wrote Alana O’Hare, spokesperson for the Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau, in an email to The Herald.
“When people visit Providence (and all of Rhode Island), they fall in love and keep coming back,” O’Hare added, citing that a record 28.4 million people visited the state in 2023.
But some Brown students questioned the flight’s practicality as part of their travel plans to and from campus.
To head home to Long Island, New York, Joseph Fiscella ’27 typically drives or takes an Amtrak train, then hops on the Long Island Rail Road. His parents are just a five-minute drive from the train station, while JFK is 40 minutes away. Fiscella also tends to bring a lot of items home, meaning a flight with limited baggage would be impractical.
Although the $49 fare from T.F. Green to J.F.K. is less than the $70 that Fiscella’s trip usually costs, he said he is “willing to pay the extra money to go directly to my hometown.”
But for other students, taking the new flight to and from Providence will be much more convenient.
A Beijing local, Diqiu Liu ’27 said she was excited to hear about the new route. Currently, Liu must use a combination of planes, trains and cars in her travel plans. To get to Providence, she flies to either Boston Logan International Airport or JFK. When flying through JFK, she then has to take both a train and an uber to get to campus — a process she described as lengthy and expensive.
The new flight will reduce her travel expenses to about one-third of what they usually are, she said.
Pavani Durbhakula is a senior staff writer and photographer. She is a first-year from DC and plans to study IAPA and Public Health. In her free time, she enjoys baking, reading, and searching for new coffee shops.