Age of company in relation to pay is mostly irrelevant, assuming the company is well-established, which JetBlue is. This isn’t a startup anymore. Jetblue has also had a larger profit margin than other companies. It made more money per seat per departure than any other airline at one point in negotiations (I think that’s recently decreased due to poor performance however). In other words, they could afford to pay its pilots industry leading pay and still make a ton of money. While delta makes more overall money, they also have a lot more pilots to pay. What matters is the margin, or per capita revenue/profit. And JB has been one of the most consistently and most profitable airlines. During negotiations, the company never once said they couldn’t afford every ALPA ask. They just didn’t want to pay for it. They worded it as “we want to retain our competitive advantage and keep our costs down.” But when asked directly, they never once used the “We can’t afford to pay you industry leading pay” line that is so often spouted by company defenders who are just happy to be here and are fine working for less.

You’re new so you get a pass...but don’t buy that line for a second. Jetblue can absolutely afford to pay us in line with our legacy/SWA peers. Pilot pay has never bankrupted a company, despite management wanting you to believe it has or will. Nor will it limit growth opportunities. Keep in mind, jetblue recently bought back what, $1.5 billion in stock? If jetblue couldn’t afford to pay us industry leading pay, they also couldn’t afford to buy back that much stock. Nor could they afford to buy the majority of its A321s with cash.