Jet to the Point: reflecting on JBLU’s week
 

Summary if you didn’t read it: “we got slaughtered by Wall Street last week. The sectors down, but we are down more. We are jumping through our arse to try to please them with some ancillary revenue streams we hope to roll out in the next few weeks.”

Guessing there is/was some heat coming from the boardroom. Wonder what we are going to charge for now for these ancillary revenue streams. Good thing free flyfi is in our contract, but I hope they don’t start charging people for that.

They have to do something. Wall St. is eating them for breakfast--and rightfully so. Our numbers our weak and our guidance isn't accurate.

We have a good product (minus OTP) and we fly to creative destinations where we can charge more for tickets. Other than that, we seem to be a rudderless ship that is growing without direction.

The old, "We have no idea what we're doing...let's throw some sh1t up against the wall and see if anything sticks" game plan...


It's a bold strategy, Cotton...let's see if it works out for them.....

How bout QUIT ****ING $ AWAY ON STUPID JV BS! Hire some people that KNOW HOW TO RUN A DAMN AIRLINE! Enough of this amateur hour!

A basic economy fare with a charge for carry-ons and perhaps more just became more likely.

Wall St has been pushing for it on recent earnings calls, but they had been resistant.

Doesn’t make sense to do this. American is doing away with it. No need to do it.

But our stock has been garbage for much longer than a week.

I hope they learn how to put potato chips on my airplane on-time.

Just about every route Jetblue adds is already served by another carrier. I’m surprised Jetblue has done as well as it has for almost two decades. Jetblue goes head to head with the legacies in New York and Boston and head to head with the LCC’s in MCO and FLL. Just an outsider observation.

Because our product is better but it’s slipping. We’ve let our cabins and entertainments systems get old. The TV’s in the 190’s and old 320’s are garbage. Flyfi helps offset that. But if we want to continue to win customers we cannot let “cost cutting” negatively affect our product any more than it already has.

Yep, and on-time ("I love to miss my business meeting or connecting flight to my Vaca", said No passenger ever) and LABOR UNREST.

On time performance is a joke, and something that I have yet to see a real plan for. That's the big one that worries me. We can send out emails all day about diversity, but when it comes to operational performance I haven't heard a peep from the higher ups. The product can be great, but if we can't get people there then they won't be coming back.

Reserve grids are in the red across the board for the following month before a single block hour has even been flown. RSAs daily. Last week I actually received a phone call from scheduling, desperately asking if I'd be willing to help out and cover a flight. The best part? I had just finished my day, 3 legs and was about to get on the hotel van. They wanted us to add one more leg to our already long day because "You guys are the only ones we have left". I honestly don't even think it was legal because technically we were already dutied off as far as I remember.

When an already worked line holder is the only thing you have left at 6pm, then you have a serious issue.

IMHO, OTP could be fixed, but the changes that would have a significant impact cost money, and they’ve decided that it’s not worth eating into the short-term margins. If there are low-cost/no-cost solutions, great let’s try them, we can shuffle procedures, send emails, etc., but I don’t think we’re willing to increase scheduled block times or turn times in order to improve OTP, because they just don’t think it’s worth the lost revenue.

Agreed completely. The serious issue I have with it is what is the tipping point? When are enough people or the coveted business traveler (bos-lga, bos-dca) going to say enough is enough and never fly jetblue again because the otp is that bad and our product (brand) becomes soooo unreliable. It’s a serious issue that might come back and bite them in the butt soon.

Why are you guys worried about OTP, they fixed that, remember "virtual spares"!

Ding ding ding.
It costs less to do it this way.
Only thing that will change it is really bad PR.

I can’t believe some journalist out there hadn’t caught on to our fall and how bad our ops are right now. Look how far down the list we have gone. There is a big story there.

Or we are actually for sale and they just don’t care. It’s getting to a point where someone can walk in(as it always has been I know) and do a stock swap or offer like 30 bucks a share. Our stock is hovering around the 52 week low and it hasn’t been much above 20 lately.

I definitely agree we have no actual leadership here. There is no plan (that we know of) so what do they have left to convince the board not to sell us?

I also think with a signed contract with clear language it would actually make being bought easier. While I never thought there was a “moat” but 3500 different PEAs could be a problem. Now the buying airline knows exactly what it is getting.

Maybe they do have a plan but we sure as heck don’t know what it is.

I hope you didn't enable their bad behaviors. BJ management *chose* to understaff the airline. They *chose* to live with the consequences. The more people jump to enable them, the worse it will get. Let's not enable this MBA driven business model using corporate welfare and labor subsidization.



Next time catering is late or they call you to crew after your line, think back to all the stock buybacks BJ used their "excess capital" for. Remember that BJ did put out an official statement citing excess capital and how they wanted to return more money to their owners.


Remember guys, the fight is not over. It has just begun.


This communique is for entertainment purposes only. It does not implicitly or explicitly acknowledge employment with any air carrier nor is any relationship implied. This communique does not represent the opinions or policies of ALPA or JB ALPA and does not represent the collective pilot group, ALPA, nor does it imply collective bargaining, advocacy, or workforce actions intended to disrupt operations.

Makes you wonder if taking a company public is the best course of action in the first place. Sure it's quick cash for investors, but it's still a gamble and a game of musical chairs. Years ago Dell went private again after shareholders obliterated the company. Regardless, we can't let these failed MBAs trick us into thinking that it's their "fiduciary responsibility" to make money for the shareholders first.



https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebat...ximize-profits


This communique is for entertainment purposes only. It does not implicitly or explicitly acknowledge employment with any air carrier nor is any relationship implied. This communique does not represent the opinions or policies of ALPA or JB ALPA and does not represent the collective pilot group, ALPA, nor does it imply collective bargaining, advocacy, or workforce actions intended to disrupt operations.

Queue-

Not a fan of MBAs?

In 6 months we’ve managed to replace the interiors on 2 A320’s! That’s right.... 2. If that’s not ineffective leadership I don’t know what is.

We’ll just blame our “business partner”, who was the lowest bidder, because they pay their labor the least, labor who are all about to quit, creating a critical staffing situation, and we’ll have to hire the next lowest bidder, but that bidder doesn’t even own the equipment necessary to perform said task, and massive delays will ensue.

Oh wait no, that was catering.

The first few cabin restyles were done in GSO. Not sure the problem, but we are no longer doing heavy mx or cabin restyling in GSO. Anyone know where we are doing mx now besides Lake City and San Salvador.

Love these stories. They give us bottom shelf profit sharing, they get bottom shelf GAS meter.
Im a reserve and they called me 6 times on one of my 2 days off.
I went to see Antman. :cool:

Why should I care about saving the company money aka single engine taxiing. If I don’t receive any of the saved money. Actually 5% of my profit sharing goes to pay for other people’s retirement.

Come to NK, I’m out sick, have all my work days marked sick on my schedule till end of August, get called every block of days off for junior assignments.....

I can top that...I've been "unsuspended" by a regional (no longer in business) so I could be junior manned. They also suspended me another time, but broke it up into segments on my days off. Why did I keep getting suspended? I kept telling them to F themselves when they tried to junior man me.

Three thumbs up!

Yup, that is better. They were thinking “suspension doesn’t do anything, how can we really punish him? .... I know, make him work! .... that is harsh, but it might work “

I can't top that, obviously, but at one of my previous airlines, the day (day off) before I was to go to captain upgrade training I got a call from the puzzle palace while I was out to eat with my wife. Like a dumba55 I answered because it was the day before upgrade and I thought they were calling about training or changing my hotel, whatever.

Nope, it was screw-services calling to junior assign me. I told them that I had been drinking adult beverages (which was true) and they still made my say I was refusing the flight. I had to have a meeting with the chief pilot, even though I was illegal for the assignment.

If it ever happens again, I will make them say on a recoreded line that they are assigning this flight to a pilot who has declared I have been drinking adult beverages. Which, is actually what I said in the first place, on a recorded line...