Westchester NY, Oct. 22 (lohud.com) – In less than a month, JetBlue will begin direct flights from Westchester County Airport to Nassau in the Bahamas, the airline’s first international flights from Westchester.

But the flights, starting Nov. 15, won’t require any U.S. customs checks here, because passengers boarding in the Bahamas are “pre-cleared” there, said a JetBlue spokesman and Peter Scherrer, general manager of the Westchester airport.

Scherrer said the local airport could only accept flights from airports — including several in the Caribbean — where passengers go through U.S. customs checks before returning to the country. “If they didn’t have pre-clearance we wouldn’t be able to get flights in here,” he said.

When the Nassau service begins, JetBlue will fly one flight in and out every day, said airline spokesman Mateo Lleras.

A flight will be scheduled to depart at 8:10 a.m., arriving in Nassau three hours later. Returning, the flight will leave Nassau at 12:05 p.m. and arrive in Westchester at 2:55 p.m., Lleras said. The flights will be made with an Embraer E-190 jet, which carries up to 100 passengers, Lleras said.

“We think it’s going do do very well,” Lleras said. “We hope the community definitely embraces it. … We think there’s definitely that demand.”

One of seven passenger airlines serving Westchester, JetBlue currently flies from there to five stops in Florida, with connections throughout the Caribbean and to Austin, Texas.

But the Nassau flight will not be the first international flight from Westchester. In the past, airlines have flown to Bermuda and Toronto, Scherrer said.

This is an excerpt from lohud.com as it appeared on October 24, 2011. For updates or to read the current version of this post in its entirety, please click here.

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