Currently headquartered on 12 floors at 118-29 Queens Blvd. inthe Forest Hills section of Queens, the airline will move six milescloser to Manhattan by subleasing approximately 200,000 square feetat Brause Realty's 27-01 Queens Plaza North in Long Island City.Ironically, the tenant from which it's subleasing the space isMetLife, whose logo now sits atop Manhattan's 200 Park Ave. in aspace once occupied by the Pan Am emblem.

In 2012, JetBlue will consolidate its present operations inForest Hills and Darien, CT into the Long Island City space, whichwill house a total of 950 employees. Seventy positions from theDarien offices, which provide transactional financial support, willbe relocated to Queens. At a news conference Monday afternoon,JetBlue CEO Dave Barger said the airline plans to add another 130positions at its new headquarters over the next few years.

For more than a year, the airline had contemplated relocatingfrom the city. Barger said Monday afternoon that the roster ofcandidates for JetBlue's corporate offices was finally whittleddown this past fall to a shortlist of two cities: New York City andOrlando, where it maintains a training center known as JetBlueUniversity.