Ben Mutzabaugh

USA TODAY

JetBlue is back in Atlanta, officially returning to the world’s busiest airport after an absence of more than 13 years.

The airline inaugurated non-stop service Thursday from its hub in Boston. Atlanta becomes the 101st city on JetBlue’s route map, with JetBlue offering five daily Atlanta-Boston round-trip flights on Airbus A320 aircraft.

“It’s a new day for Atlanta travelers who, for too long, have faced high fares and limited choices,” Dave Clark, JetBlue’s VP - sales and revenue management, says in a statement. “As we connect our Boston customers with a top-requested destination, we’re also excited to show Atlanta why JetBlue is a favorite for fliers in the 100 other cities we fly to across the U.S., Caribbean and Latin America.”

For JetBlue, the service also restores flights to a destination it dropped more than a decade ago.

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It was in 2003 that a then three-year-old JetBlue launched non-stop service to its focus city in Long Beach, Calif. The carrier soon added a second California route (Oakland), but its stay in Atlanta would be short-lived. It withdrew from Atlanta after just six months, exiting amid a bruising turf war that erupted between Delta and now-defunct AirTran on flights between Atlanta and the West Coast.

"We just thought it was a little crazy," then-JetBlue CEO David Neeleman said in 2003 about the decision to leave.

Now JetBlue is back, with the company saying Atlanta had been “the most requested destination by … travelers” in Boston, where JetBlue is the top carrier.

However, JetBlue’s previously announced plans to keep expanding in Atlanta appear to have run into headwinds in disagreement with the airport over gate space. Last September, JetBlue said that in addition to Boston, it planned to add future service between Atlanta and three of its other busiest hubs: New York JFK, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.

ARCHIVES: JetBlue calls it quits in Atlanta (October 2003) | AirTran Airways makes its final flight (December 2014)

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Since then, JetBlue claims the Atlanta airport has reneged on a pledge to give it space in its preferred concourse there. JetBlue was miffed enough about the situation to sent a letter to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on March 8, requesting the agency intervene on “possible violations of federal grant assurances by the City of Atlanta at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.”

JetBlue said its return to Atlanta was predicated on securing space in the airport’s E or F concourses and that it would be unwilling to fly there otherwise. The airport agreed to the condition, JetBlue said.

But, according to the airline's letter, Atlanta notified JetBlue just six weeks before its first Atlanta flights that it could no longer accommodate that plan. Even worse, JetBlue said, the airport was looking at forcing the carrier to split its operations between two different concourses – a complicated logistical set-up for an airline with a small presence at the airport.

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JetBlue deemed the issue to be so dire it considered postponing the launch of its Atlanta service, a move it said would have affected more than 50,000 customers who had already purchased tickets.

In the end, JetBlue opted to launch the service as scheduled, though the issue remains unresolved. JetBlue’s Boston flights are currently being split between the D and E concourses, JetBlue spokesman Doug McGraw confirmed to Today in the Sky.

What does that mean for future expansion in Atlanta?

“We’re not ready to take the second step into phase two,” JetBlue’s Clark said to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a Thursday story. “It’s not clear where the airport would even put us right now.”

Stay tuned ...

TWITTER: You can follow Today in the Sky editor Ben Mutzabaugh at twitter.com/TodayInTheSky

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