A 16-Seat Jet Is Flying New York to Palm Beach Again This Season
If you have ever looked at the winter migration from the Northeast and thought there ought to be something between a first-class ticket and chartering your own plane, a company is betting you are not alone.
Blade Urban Air Mobility is bringing back BLADEone for the 2026-27 season, a by-the-seat jet service running between the New York area and South Florida. The service starts November 19 and runs through May 2, which lines up almost exactly with the season here.
What it actually is
The flights operate out of Westchester County Airport, north of New York City, and land at one of two South Florida fields. One is President Donald J. Trump International Airport, the Palm Beach airport that most Jupiter residents still think of as PBI and that was formally renamed in July. The other is Opa-Locka Executive, north of Miami.
The aircraft is the part that makes it unusual. Blade is running the service with Aero, a Los Angeles operator, using a commercial-sized jet that has been stripped down and refitted with 16 single seats. No middle seats, no seatmate, and a cabin carrying roughly a tenth of the people a plane that size would normally hold.
The pitch
Blade chief executive Rob Wiesenthal framed the service as occupying "the white space" between a $1,000 first-class seat and a $25,000 private charter. Aero chief executive Ben Klein described the customer as someone who wants the ease of a private jet without paying for the whole aircraft.
Neither company published a fixed fare for the new season. Blade has historically sold BLADEone seats in the low thousands per person each way, with helicopter transfers to the airport priced separately, so expect something well north of a commercial ticket and well south of a charter.
Why it matters here
Jupiter sits at the northern end of the Palm Beach airport's catchment, and a good share of the town empties out and refills on roughly the same calendar this service runs. A seasonal, scheduled, small-cabin option between Westchester and Palm Beach is aimed squarely at the people making that trip twice a year.
It is also a reminder of how quickly the Palm Beach airport's profile is changing. The renaming in July drew national attention, and the airport is now being marketed by name in announcements like this one.
The service was announced in early October. Details here are drawn from reporting by Prabhat Ranjan Mishra for Interesting Engineering, which covered the announcement, along with Blade's own published materials. Anyone considering it should confirm current schedules and pricing directly with the operator.