Geraghty referred to both setbacks in her conversation with publicist Geri Denterlein, on stage at the chamber meeting.
“We continue to grow Boston again and again, … reestablishing our presence here,” Geraghty said. “Our transactions that we did not pass muster with the Department of Justice, they set us back a bit in terms of our growth plans for Boston. But you know, we’re very, very focused on returning to our path, pre-COVID, with Boston.”
JetBlue’s daily departures out of Logan are close to where they were in 2019, per numbers provided by the company. That year, JetBlue had an average of 150 daily departures out of Boston, and peaked at just over 170. This month, JetBlue is averaging 146.
But the passenger count, as provided by the Massachusetts Port Authority, has not recovered as quickly. While Logan’s overall passenger traffic recently passed pre-pandemic levels, JetBlue’s is still lagging. In January, JetBlue’s passenger count in Boston cleared 777,000, up from 721,000 a year earlier, but a far cry from the 903,000 reported in January 2020. Local passenger numbers at Delta, JetBlue’s biggest rival at Logan, by comparison rose from 603,000 in January 2020 to 703,000 in January 2024, and more than 736,000 in January of this year.
And when it come to the question of who is Logan’s busiest carrier, JetBlue has a bigger market share in the winter, mainly because of its seasonal Caribbean flights, but Delta takes the lead in the summer months, per a Massport spokesperson, and generally has the edge year-round now.
Geraghty pointed to strong growth ahead in Boston, including a 15 percent increase year-over-year in seats sold for the April-June quarter. She said she knows the airline needs to improve its on-time performance. Geraghty and Denterlein also discussed a few of JetBlue’s new Logan routes. JetBlue in January announced it will have 77 nonstop destinations from Boston, more than Delta (or any other airline), once a bevy of summer seasonal routes are included.
New European destinations include Madrid and Edinburgh (launching in May), and flights will start to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in June. JetBlue is also working on a new 11,000-square-foot lounge at Terminal C.
To bolster her local cred, Geraghty also referred to her top lieutenant, JetBlue president Marty St. George, a South Boston resident. She recruited St. George back to JetBlue around the time she was promoted to the CEO’s role in early 2024.
“My president, sometimes we need an interpreter for him,” she said, “he’s so Boston.”
This is an installment of our weekly Bold Types column about the movers and shakers on Boston’s business scene.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.
With colder-than-average temperatures this winter, skyrocketing energy prices have been top of mind for many Bostonians, including Mayor Michelle Wu, who addressed the squeeze felt by consumers in her Wednesday State of the City address.
“Household budgets are strained by higher energy bills,” she said. “If your home isn’t well insulated, you are spending too much to keep warm.”
But just how expensive are energy costs in Boston? Federal data tracking average prices across the nation show that Boston metro’s prices are much higher than the national average.
The average electricity price in the Boston metro area was 31 cents per kilowatt-hour in December 2024, the most recent data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was about 73 percent higher than the national average of 18 cents. Natural gas prices were around 65 percent more expensive than the national average, while gasoline prices were roughly even.
These numbers come from the federal statistics bureau’s Consumer Price Index, which uses surveys and other data sources to calculate average prices change over time.
There are many factors that explain why energy costs are so high in the city and state compared to much of the rest of the nation. One factor is that Massachusetts relies on oil and gas pipelines from other states and Canada, which are vulnerable to price jumps. It also consumes a lot more energy than it is able to generate on its own.
The age of Boston’s energy system also makes keeping cost down difficult, said Belleh Fontem, assistant professor of operations management at UMass Lowell.
Old systems and equipment waste more heat, are often more likely to break, and are less able to adapt to sudden changes in temperature, Fontem and others said. There have been some efforts by the state to modernize the aging energy system. But it takes time to adjust such a complex grid, and moving too quickly could cause energy companies to pass increased costs onto consumers, Fontem said.
The city’s cold winter climate also puts a major strain on the energy system, which can lead to an overall increase in prices, said Harvey Michaels, a lecturer in energy management innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This winter was also colder than average, so more people have been cranking up the heat to stay warm.
Because winter temperatures in Boston can dip so low, the city has intentionally built a vast but costly energy system capable of supplying heat during those cold dips, Michaels explained. Although the whole system isn’t typically used in warmer months, it still costs a lot of money in upkeep.
“It’s like having a fleet of planes flying around with very few passengers on them,” he said. “It’s going to be very expensive for the passengers that do fly” to make it worth it.
Boston, along with the rest of New England, also relies more heavily on natural gas imported from Canada than most of the US.
If trade relations between the two countries continue to sour, and more tariffs are imposed on energy, prices are very likely to climb in Boston and across New England, experts say.
Scooty Nickerson can be reached at scooty.nickerson@globe.com.
BOSTON (WHDH) – The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has secured approval to build a new hospital in Boston.
The state’s public health council approved the institute’s application Thursday night.
The facility will be constructed in the Longwood Medical Area and include 300 beds.
Dana-Farber intends to partner with Beth Israel for the new venture.
(Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Boston, MA – September 23: Boston Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck, right, and president of basketball … More
Boston Globe via Getty Images
A group led by Bill Chisholm has agreed to purchase the Boston Celtics for a record $6.1 billion, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported Thursday. That price point was right in line with Forbes’ latest valuation ($6.0 billion) of the Celtics from December.
As Forbes’ Justin Teitelbaum and Brett Knight noted in October, the NBA’s new national TV contracts—worth roughly $76 billion over the next 11 years—along with record attendance and sponsorship are causing the value of the league’s franchises to skyrocket. They estimated that no NBA team would sell for less than $3 billion now.
Now that a sale agreement has been reached for one of the league’s preeminent franchises, the NBA can turn its attention to expansion. Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reported Thursday that the league “is expected to begin exploring expansion in earnest” in the wake of this sale. ESPN’s Tim Bontemps added that it “could have an impact on the potential timeline” for expansion.
“For months, sources have said that process wouldn’t move forward until there was clarity on Boston’s situation, and where this sale price wound up,” Bontemps wrote. “Now that there is clarity—and at this kind of number—the league could revisit that timeline.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told reporters in September that there “was not a lot of discussion” about expansion at the league’s board of governors meeting, “but only largely not for lack of interest.” Instead, the league office told governors that they weren’t “quite ready” to entertain those discussions.
The board of governors typically meets in the spring as well, so the timing of this sale figures to spark a new round of expansion talks in the coming weeks.
This past September, Bontemps and ESPN colleagues Kevin Pelton and Brian Windhorst reported that both “league sources and people who are working on forming bidding groups” are aiming to have expansion teams up and running in the 2027-28 season. “Although starting in 2026-27 isn’t impossible, it has become more unrealistic,” they added.
At the time, they estimated that “a pair of new expansion teams could net the league north of $10 billion combined—meaning every team would receive a check for over $300 million as the new teams come into the league.” Given the NBA’s current rate of growth and the potential markets it could tap for expansion, that might wind up being on the low end.
Prior to the sale of the Celtics, the average value of the league’s 30 franchises had already jumped by 15% within the past year to $4.4 billion, per Forbes. The Golden State Warriors ($8.8 billion), New York Knicks ($7.5 billion) and Los Angeles Lakers ($7.1 billion) all had higher valuations than the Celtics, while the Los Angeles Clippers ($5.5 billion) and Chicago Bulls ($5.0 billion) weren’t far behind.
Once the NBA decides on how many expansion teams to add—it’s widely expected that it’ll add two in this round—cities and ownership groups will begin to place bids. After the league office finalizes the new teams, the next step will be to hold an expansion draft.
The expansion teams will be working with a smaller budget than the rest of the league’s teams for their first few seasons, which will put them at a disadvantage early on. They’ll have a salary cap worth 66.67% of the NBA’s salary cap in their first season and 80% in the second season. In the third year and beyond, they’ll have the same salary cap as every other team.
Seattle and Las Vegas are considered the “heavy favorites” to land expansion teams, according to John Hollinger of The Athletic. Silver told ESPN’s Pat McAfee last February that “Vegas is definitely on our list.”
In July, Randall Williams and Kim Bhasin of Bloomberg reported that the “total price tag, including building a new arena, has the potential to hit $7 billion” if the league does award a team to Las Vegas. They added that the group that owns the Seattle Kraken is the “heavy favorite” to land an NBA team if the league expands to Seattle, but “the Vegas team appears very much up for grabs.”
Tim Booth of the Seattle Times noted that David Bonderman, the father of Kraken majority owner Samantha Holloway, was a minority owner of the Celtics prior to this sale. “The sale would divest the Bonderman family from any additional NBA ownership stakes as would be required in order to have ownership in another franchise,” he added.
After news of the Celtics sale broke Thursday, Holloway released a statement hinting at her ownership group’s interest in bringing the NBA back to Seattle.
“We understand that today’s news will pique the interest of NBA fans in Seattle,” Holloway said. “As we have said before, our ownership group is ideally positioned for an NBA team with Climate Pledge Arena and the incredible fans in Seattle, but we will always be respectful of the Commissioner’s process and timeline.”
Bontemps, Pelton and Windhorst reported in September that “the widespread belief among league and team sources” is that “Seattle and Las Vegas are the logical landing points for a pair of new expansion teams,” but other cities could always hop into the mix. They mentioned Mexico City, Montreal, Vancouver, Kansas City and Louisville as other possibilities.
Once the sale of the Celtics gets finalized, that figures to bring the NBA one step closer to adding a pair of expansion teams, whether in Seattle, Las Vegas or elsewhere.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.
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