As Robin said, it was a short notice small window of opportunity to make a play to overnight add an already existing west coast network when other organic west coast strategies have so far failed to really materialize, and west coast access to gates/slots remains limited. This, coupled with merging with an airline with a similar culture/product made sense. Yes, it'd have been a big change from the "organic all the way" mantra. But it was an overnight solution to a thus far unsolved long term problem. That is in stark contrast to bringing on a fleet of outsourced RJs, in an upgauging slot/gate constrained environment, which wouldn't solve any issues that currently plague JetBlue. Both scenarios would cause a lot of issues at JetBlue...but at least the Virgin merger would have solved a major problem in the process.

You can't really use the attempted Virgin acquisition in an argument about protecting yourself from outsourced RJs. If JetBlue wanted outsourced RJs, they would have had them. But as pointed out multiple times, we don't have gate space or slots for RJs. We are upgauging (significantly)...not downgauging. The blowback from outsourcing our flying, during a labor dispute, with a regional pilot shortage and massive major hiring, would have blown this operation up even further, and there is a 0.00002% chance JB management would have done that. That is why RJ scope didn't take much negotiating capital. Yes it is important. The most important section. But in this case it wasn't a sole reason to vote yes. And our section 1 has plenty of holes in it anyway as has also been pointed out. So it was good, but not great by any means.