Ben Mutzabaugh

USA TODAY

It’s official: JetBlue is returning to Atlanta after an absence of more than 13 years.

JetBlue will begin flying from Atlanta on March 30, when it begins flying five daily round-trip flights to its hub in Boston on Airbus A320 aircraft. The carrier said it also “intends” to add additional service from Atlanta to its bases at New York JFK, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, though JetBlue did not specify a schedule or start date for those routes.

In announcing its return to Atlanta, JetBlue put the focus on its hub in Boston, where it already is the biggest carrier. The airline said it’s kicking off an effort to grow its schedule there “by more than 40% to 200 peak day departures.” JetBlue currently offers about 140 daily departures on its busiest days at Boston.

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Atlanta will be JetBlue’s 63rd nonstop destination from Boston, and the carrier also revealed plans to expand existing service on three other routes from Boston.

“Boston travelers have spoken, and we are listening by adding Atlanta to our route map and expanding our operation to 200 peak day departures,” Marty St. George, JetBlue’s commercial and planning, chief, says in a statement. “After decades of being underserved by high-fare legacy carriers, Boston has an airline that is committed to offering the best service and most nonstop destinations of any other airline.”

JetBlue also appears to be taking a tougher tone against its biggest rivals. In addition to St. George’s comments about “high-fare legacy carriers” in Boston, JetBlue pledged its new Atlanta flights “would bring “low fares and award-winning service (to) a city that is dominated by two of the Big Four airlines.”

Delta is by far the dominant carrier in Atlanta. Southwest became the No. 2 carrier in Atlanta following its acquisition of AirTran, which had operated a large connecting hub there.

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JetBlue also took aim at its legacy rivals in announcing its plans for a beefed up Boston presence. Those plans call for a fourth daily round-trip flight between Boston and San Francisco, with each of those flights offering JetBlue's Mint lie-flat seats. JetBlue said that offering was to satisfy "customers seeking an alternative to lesser 'premium' class service offered by legacy carriers on long transcontinental routes."

As for Atlanta, JetBlue previously flew to the city in 2003, when it launched nonstop service to its focus city in Long Beach, Calif. The airline soon added a second California route (Oakland), but its stay in Atlanta would be short-lived.

The carrier withdrew from Atlanta after just six months, exiting amid a turf war that erupted between Delta and now-defunct AirTran and caught JetBlue in the crossfire.

Then-upstart AirTran was busy building its hub in Atlanta, but that expansion provoked a strong response from Atlanta-based Delta. Delta’s response ratcheted up after AirTran started nonstop flights between Atlanta and L.A.

USATODAY.com - JetBlue calls it quits in Atlanta

In turn, Delta beefed up its own Atlanta-L.A. schedule to fend off AirTran, going to 13 daily round-trip flights from eight, according to media reports at the time. Fares plummeted amid the intensifying Delta-AirTran turf war. It also put pressure on JetBlue to cut fares on its Atlanta-California, ultimately prompting the airline to pull out.

"We just thought it was a little crazy," then-JetBlue CEO David Neeleman said in 2003 about the decision to leave Atlanta amid the intensifying battle between Delta and AirTran.

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