This may not be of interest to many, because it affects those travelling from Boston and NYC, but I learned that JetBlue now codeshares with Cape Air - and it looks like the savings are pretty significant in some instances. For me, going from Boston to San Juan and then to Beef Island and then the ferry to get to Virgin Gorda is an itinerary fraught with too many potential hiccups - even though it costs a fair amount less, given the way Cape Air really porks you from SJU to VIJ, which is almost criminal (and as an aside, BOS to STT is also out of the question for me).
Anyhow, if one goes to the JetBlue site (
https://www.jetblue.com) and enters as a departure many of the major cities that it serves and scrolls through the destinations, both Tortola and Virgin Gorda will appear as one of them, using Cape Air under its codeshare system.
One example, and I again acknowledge that it's a Boston departure and thus likely not helpful to many here - but nevertheless hopefully illustrative of potential savings that one might obtain from other major cities, my customary flight option (with a total travel time of ~ 8.5 hours, which includes a ~3.5 hour layover in San Juan), via codeshare was a total round trip fare of $1,500 (much less than I've paid before), and the San Juan layover contemplated the same Cape Air flight leaving for VIJ at 4:30 that one would incur if booking two separate tickets on each discrete airline. However, that total fare of $1,500 is a relatively good deal, given that Cape Air is bending people over for $500 or more one way from SJU to VIJ - and that's the "value," meaning non-refundable fare; refundable is over $1,000
one way.
A bit of poking around indicated that there were also some pretty good savings if one used Tortola's Beef Island airport as a destination via a codeshare, but again, it will depend upon the departure city. However, if you're already inclined to take JetBlue, I suggest looking into the codeshare fares. MAF
.
