TrueBlue Changes 2023
 

Just received this e-mail from B6. What do you think the changes will be for next year? Bonuses are going away starting next year.

Any bets on whether the dollar savings per point redeemed will stay the same or decrease? I'm betting on it staying the same. Cash fares are higher this year, which automatically increases award cost to customers.

JetBlue is really unique in its approach and most airlines will always offer the sweets before giving out the bad news. The email basically are all "sour" with zero good news. It is clear that they have nothing new to offer, but decide that they need to remove all these bonus opportunities and benefits. [Maybe saving some money to pay for that stupid merger with Spirit!] They have no good reason so they sneak in this nonsense email on a Friday afternoon.

Personally JetBlue just took away the rest of the "sort of good perks" of being a TrueBlue Mosaic member.

It makes me regret trying to make it to 2023 Mosaic after committing to two every expensive one way flight on Mint, not to mention the "downgrade" to the older Mint seats, due to the delayed delivery of the long haul A321LRs and the move of one of the domestic new Mint A321Neo to the BOS-LGW flight.

The inability to use points to upgrade to Mint Studio truly sucks but honestly after flying my first Mint Transatlantic flight yesterday, it hurts less because I am a bit let down by the Mint Transatlantic experience anyway.

I really hope JetBlue is going to surprise me but with a broken website and poor point redemption value, it makes renewing my Mosaic in 2024 less and less likely to happen. They really need to release the details soon because I am already planning requalification trips for first half of 2023 now.

Carfield

Deleted

The thing that irked me about that email was that the benefits announced were vague, almost like they were filler to soften the blow of them removing the redemption benefits.

Would partner awards come in 2023?

I have no idea what they're planning but I viewed the email as a negative thing. Recent interactions directly with the company have taught me to expect nothing good.

I'm in a similar situation as Carfield. I'll most likely re-qualify for 2023 but I'm coming up on the point where I need to start booking early 2023 travel so I need to decide if that will be on JetBlue, AA, or Delta.

Back in the day, "enhancements" was a dirty word over on the Delta forum. I have a feeling we are going to have a similar experience.

-J.

"JetBlue flights are flights operated by JetBlue and purchased under a JetBlue flight number. Take 3 bonus can only be earned once a year. Take 3 bonus points do not count towards earning Mosaic status. See additional Bonus Offer terms below. Expires 12/31/22"

Has this always been the case for Take 3/Lucky 7? Or was this added quietly in 2022?

Back in the day?

This has always been the case. The expiration was added in 2022 because those bonuses are going away after this year.

This definitely sounds like the program will get worse rather than better.

It only caught my attention because a segment I took with AA earlier in the year was counted

Could they be any more weasely?

As of yesterday or today, EMS seats no longer require a 100 point redemption for Mosaics. The upgrade to EMS shows up as $0 on the seat selection map. Perhaps this change for 2023 was loaded early.

https://viewfromthewing.com/jetblue-...hieving-status

4 benefits tiers which you get with "tiles". You earn 1 tile per $100 spent with B6/AA and at B6 Vacations or $1000 on the B6 credit cards. Tiers are at 50, 100, 150, and 250 "tiles". Biggest benefits seem to be a lot of "early" benefits as people qualify, mint upgrade certs, and top tier includes 4 Blade helicopter seat vouchers.

Interesting, but I'm sure there are downsides here, esp for those who don't want to earn Mosaic on spend and don't want to use the CC.

They've basically created a new program from scratch without any regard to their existing Mosaics. This primarily benefits the casual leisure flyer and not long term Mosaics. I can't imagine what "customer feedback" led them to this other than someone's internal opinions. The fact that they released this news to the public before emailing existing program members should tell you how they really feel about loyalty. What a slap in the face. I've been flying Jetblue for almost 20 years now and I think I'm finally out. Lots of other airlines fly where I fly and will be more appreciative of my loyalty.

https://blueir.investproductions.com...2022-150035785

Definitely frustrating to see EMS at booking limited to Mosaic 2 and not 1. At least you can MS it in in $80k if you pick 20 tiles as your Mosaic Perks You Pick benefit.

Also for Mosaic 3: "Number of certificates required to upgrade varies."
I hope this is for international only, and only for something like Mint Studio. Requiring 2 upgrade certs to move from Core to Mint really reduces the value of this benefit.

And how does Mint Suite Priory work?

Does this really surprise you? Most of the "old money" has already jumped ship to legacies. They are doing what they can to bring "new money" in the door.

As for me, $5000 for Mosaic 1 (which IMHO is such a lazy choice of name) seems kind of reasonable. If JetBlue's operation was more reliable -- and if they had more partners like an alliance -- I would actually consider it.

-J.

TrueBlue changes now live on JetBlue.com
https://www.jetblue.com/trueblue/meet-the-new-trueblue

Being Mosaic before the Northeast Alliance with AA was great. With AA pushing more and more traffic to B6, the flights I take are littered with AA elites who don't understand JetBlue, increased competition for Mint and EMS seats, preboarding scrums, etc.

Taking a closer look now... and wow they have decimated the program. Group B boarding? Only one comp drink? A lot of this must feel like a slap in the face to existing Mosaics.

-J.

Any idea if Mosaics will still have free cancelation (ie travel bank credit) on all non-Blue Basic fares?

Also looks like Mosaic 1 won’t be able to select EMS at check-in. Can we still pay the 100 pts for that?

Still nothing on redeeming awards on partners?

That's in the "Pick your Perks" section so I hope as soon as you hit Mosaic 1 you still have access to unlimited drinks.

Group B boarding is only for pre-mosaics who choose that benefit, it looks like it is mosaic boarding once you hit the first tier.

I think the Mosaic 1 benefits correspond to the existing Mosaic ones (except the 100 points for EMS), so if you're spending $5k/year that doesn't change (and if you have a CC it makes it easier to qualify as well). But given B6's reliability and IT I'm giving up Mosaic after this year, burnt all my points, and have switched to DL lol

I've been actively working on that, and now that you can't use Travel Bank to pay for award ticket taxes, I need to wrap this up quicker than anticipated. I can't be the only one who remembers the award booking fee they tried doing several months ago that lasted all of 12 hours. My statement about considering Mosaic for 2023 was just me being facetious.

-J.

For me, I think the changes make a lot of sense to encourage people to get to the next level and to sets the program up for partner redemptions and reciprocal benefits on other airlines. One level made sense when all the flights were in economy and no partner flights counted towards status. Now, there are many people who quality for regular Mosaic after one or two RTs in Mint and had no incentive to gain any higher status. It also encourages more credit card spend as now it is either $50,000 or nothing and most people don't even consider trying. Getting rid of the segment based bonuses also encourages more spend over taking short inexpensive fares and they no longer need to encourage people to take 10 long flights in coach to make those flights worth B6's while to fly---given that they have Mint and Transatlantic flights now. With some extra credit card spend, I can probably quite easily get to Mosaic 2 and some co-workers that regularly travel in Mint now have an incentive to get Mosaic levels 3 or 4.

Looking at the "Mosaic Perks You Pick" -

Mint Suite Priority (arriving later in 2023)

• Priority access to Mint Suite selection on select aircraft (pending availability). Excludes Mint Studio™.

Anyone else think this means they're going to start charging for the 1-1 suites on the old Mint configuration (assuming they can get their IT to handle it)...

Taking away the even more space seats reserve at booking for 2023 for level 1 and telling their “loyalists” now at the end of the qualification year is the part that is the last straw for me. Why not change that one in 2024 for those who already qualified? I get the program is always subject to change, but it seems a little like a bait and switch to me and a big devaluation.

On top of the negative feeling I get from it, I‘m not interested in trekking to the gate hours in advance to try to secure the remaining available EMS (middle) seat.. I’d rather be in the (non-JetBlue) lounge on the other side of the airport :-)

Can’t imagine I will have any interest in going for Mosaic in 2023 - especially if AA lowest status gets the same early boarding, bags and at gate EMS - rest of the benefits don’t really matter to me in level 1.

Yes, seems that way and maybe even a bit like British Airways where you can’t book a business class seat upon booking without status. Will be interesting to see what this means.

The biggest insult here is that they clearly did this without existing Mosaics in mind. The least they could have done was grandfather us in to existing Mosaic benefits for all of 2023. The email they sent went to all TrueBlue members--they didn't even send a Mosaic specific one. Again because they don't care about us. I'll have a few weeks to figure out whether I want to switch to AA or DL.

I think it is actually the opposite. Most of the Mosaics spent a lot more than $4-5,000/year and got no extra benefits. Now they can move up to higher levels and get more benefits without having to fly 10 long flights and/or 14 total flights to get bonus miles plus they can select other benefits. Remember that Mosaic was started back when nearly all the offerings were low cost coach flights. Spending $4-5,000 on $39 trips to Florida was very difficult before. Even with Mint's introduction, you had to fly quite a few $399 LAX-NYC/BOS flights to reach Mosaic. Now there is the potential to get Mosaic with as little as one flight in a premium cabin on AA/B6.

The airline has changed and those only spending $4,000 and doing 30 low cost flights in a year are no longer anywhere close to being the top spenders. Not only that, once that tier was reached there was no incentive to keep spending. There was also no real incentive to use the credit card either if you were not spending $50,000/year.

Now, say with $20,000/year credit card spend plus the 20 point boost after reaching Tier 1, you can spend $6,000 on B6/AA and get to Tier 2. That seems very reasonable and at Tier 2 if you are not going to get to the next Tier you can still claim the 15,000 bonus.

The airline and the US market in general has changed and so must the airline. Also if partner reciprocity is to be expected in the future why should somebody spending $4-5,000/year on a combination of B6/AA flights get top tier on AA or any other airline? It would also not be fair to those spending $20,000 to end up with the lowest status on AA or any other partner. Most airlines have at least 4 tiers now. As they combine with NK and expand other airline partnerships, there have to be realistic tiers which match up with others. All things considered, I think it is pretty fair.

For me it seems like almost nothing is changing. I qualify via CC spending because the 24 hour free flight change is extremely valuable in my market. I easily save thousands of dollars a year using it, in part because one of the cities in my "area" always has much cheaper flights than my home airport does. The EMS for 100 points was nice but was always communicated as just for 2022 -- plus since I so rarely actually fly on the flight I originally booked, choosing seats at booking has never mattered much anyway!

Unless that prior higher spend (spend in 2022 for the 2023 program year) is counted toward the higher tiers for this program after the changeover (which the FAQs conveniently didn't address), then no, they're getting screwed. To get the "perks" of this new program might require new spend.

Also, the tiles are such a cop out for trying to hide the tiers.

I bet I can get more for my money by crediting to American and getting the benefits as a Fauxaic.

They are going to a multi-tier ff program. So obviously if you got a lot of perks while they were in a single tier system, your perks will be diluted if you can no longer get to the higher tiers. EMS was never a perk available at booking until the past year. I'm not sure why people are expecting it would be available going forward for the lowest tier. That first tier is basically AAdvantage Gold and Gold don't get Y+ at booking or at check-in.

So now they basically have 4 tiers like AA. I'd say their Tier 2 is pretty good since you can get 4 mint upgrades cert. With AA, I didn't get any SWUs until EXP level. Their tier 3/4 seems quite lacking, since I don't see enough perks over Tier 2.

They are basically domestic first away from becoming a legacy at this point. And they will probably get there after NK merger.

This is no longer JetBlue of 10 years ago. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you will realize these tiers are quite reasonable compared to competition.

I didn't get an email

I don't think they sent out emails. This was announced on their website

B6 just made TrueBlue program like any other program. Is there any reason for us to stick around? It feels like we'd get better value at other airlines.

Also, it doesn't look like the perks really start until spring of 2023. Our 2022 spend doesn't accrue once the new program starts in January.

Not a TrueBlue loyalist and haven’t flown B6 in a couple years . I would appreciate any info about how this works with AA. Are all AA flights except transatlantic eligible to earn Mosaic ? The information I read said to be sure to book AA flights via B6 website - but aren’t the only AA flights available on the B6 website the ones that are in the Northeast Alliance ? Is the announcement a hint that all AA flights will be on the B6 website in 2023 ? As you can see , I am quite confused :)