JETBLUE Airways plans to start flying to Grand Cayman from New York and Boston come November.

The new flights — three times a week to John F Kennedy International Airport and once a week to Boston's Logan International Airport — aim to capture a piece of the market which directly moves 330,000 passengers from the US to the Cayman Islands each year.

Last year, Cayman Airways carried close to 90 per cent of the over 15,500 passengers arriving from New York. US Airways carried all of the 1,000 arriving from Boston for the first eight months of 2011.

But JetBlue's new schedule of flights to the Caribbean island using an Airbus A320 — an aircraft family which can accommodate up to 220 passengers — increases available seats to New York by over 30,000 annually.

It is not yet clear how it will affect Cayman Airways JFK route, but the new schedule also raises airlift capacity to Boston to 10,000.

Destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean now make up almost one-third of the carrier's route network.

The US-based airline also plans to add Colombia and Dominican Republic to its list of destinations this year.