Puerto Rico is seeing air traffic at all-time highs, and now the island has another two new routes to its roster. JetBlue has officially started its newest routes to Puerto Rico, with brand-new service from Raleigh-Durham International Airport and Tampa International Airport.
The new service from Raleigh-Durham is operating daily roundtrip service to San Juan.
The other new route is a daily nonstop flight between Tampa and Puerto Rico’s Rafael Hernandez International Airport in Aguadilla on the northwestern corner of the island.
The latter is a boost for a route that JetBlue said was one that had experienced “limited competition” in recent years.
Aguadilla is the gateway to the still-largely-undiscovered western coast of the island, home to destinations like the surfing town of Rincon and Isabela, home to one of the Caribbean’s top golf resorts, the Royal Isabela
Both routes will be operating year-round, according to JetBlue. JetBlue now runs flights to Puerto Rico from 12 different cities in the United States and the Caribbean.
Recent data released by ASUR, which manages Puerto Rico’s primary air hub at San Juan’s Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, shows summer air traffic besting both 2022 numbers and passenger traffic from 2019, before the onset of the pandemic.
San Juan in particular has seen some of the fastest growth of any destination in the hemisphere in new airlift, with a host of US-baed carriers launching new routes to the destination in the post-pandemic period, from JetBlue to Frontier to American Airlines (with Frontier adding the most of all).