B6 plans
 

I know it’s all speculation, but does B6 buy NK to eventually become like the big 3? Or more like an all Airbus version of WN? What do you guys think is likely?

Management has stated it intends to become a challenger to the Big 3 vs something like WN. I believe they will hold true to that statement considering the JB model already challenges the Big 3 in terms of onboard product, the only thing missing is scale. Merging with NK provides some immediate scaling ability (planes, pilots, gates, staffing, etc) to grow the JB business model.

It’s just business. Grow or die. Has nothing to do with “becoming like the big three.”
It’s how do we compete, grow and pay shareholders?

Its about keeping us from being bought. if we are bought our BOD goes the way of the NK BOD. This is a play to keep that from happening.

That is it.

Same reason Alaska bought Virgin. It wasn’t like they really wanted the Airbuses. And they didn’t keep many of the junior people.

TBD

Impossible to determine at the moment. The Jetblue battleship has a rudder the size of a notebook. Where Jetblue sails to has more to do with the overall general state of the economy and actions of competitors than the actions of management.

We’re more of a hot air balloon than a ship.

😂😂

filler…..

And the notebook had a few trips through the hole puncher….

That’s by design so the Swiss cheese model survives a combined training department.

I’m actually concerned for the health of this company after the last earnings call. Record profit and we STILL couldn’t get into the black?!!! Seriously, WTF!!!? We have a SERIOUS management/leadership problem here!!!

Record revenue yes, record profit no.

I think a lot of this revenue was otherwise unsustainable given the company’s ridiculous reserve use strategy coupled with having to be a pseudo Airbus flight academy for the legacies. That being said, I also think the NEA has something to do with these increased revenues, our increased pax loads, but not necessarily our profits. I am interested to see if/how the company’s strategy changes now through this merger. Ultimately I think stability is what the company needs most.

I think we’re all concerned Craig. AB is the first one that needs to be gone yesterday.

all of our revenue was sold before the gas price hike. Even if we flew the planes at 100% capacity we couldn’t make money cause the tickets were sold in November with post pandemic prices and sold almost 90-95% of available tickets.

Have any of you part-time CFO types actually read all the documents and analyzed them? Is there any chance they “hid” profits by paying off assets, paying off debt, or something like that? I know next to nothing about this stuff, but I do know they’ve paid off lots of assets, paid off loans quickly, and bought back a ton of stock pretty quickly in the past. I just don’t know how we could actually lose that much with everyone else making money. If so, it definitely concerns me.

While there are some accounting gimmicks that can be used such as accelerated debt payments and prepayments, etc, it's still usually pretty transparent and reports usually reveal whether a company was operationally profitable or not. I didn't give enough F's to dig into this last report but I believe JB was not operationally profitable.

I think there were two main drivers, among many lesser drivers. One of the two main issues was high fuel costs, where the jet fuel refinery capacity in the northeast is highly constrained, which makes jet fuel purchased in the northeast more expensive than jet fuel in most of the rest of the country. That's why you see/saw a lot of tankering into BOS/JFK/EWR. Because of JB's high network concentration in the northeast, JB had more or less the highest per gallon jet fuel cost for US airlines last quarter.

The second issue is the schedule reduction announced earlier this year. JB couldn't attract/train/retain enough pilots (and other staff) to reliably fly the schedule they wanted/released. So they had to reduce the schedule for the spring/summer during some of the revenue peak, which left a lot of revenue on the table. But that wasn't the biggest problem. The biggest problem is what flying less hours does to CASM, or cost per available seat mile. When you fly a lot less hours than planned, you do have a small proportional decrease in variable costs, such as fuel burn and crew overtime. But all of the airline's fixed costs (aircraft leases, salaried employees, office and training facilities, gate rentals) are now spread over a much smaller pool of available seat miles. So flying fewer hours, utilizing your assets fewer hours per day, dramatically raises your CASM, just as you take in less RASM (revenue).

But the airline didn't have a better short term choice. They didn't have the staff, hadn't done what it would take to attract/train/retain pilots (and other staff) to reliably run the full schedule. Remember the COO's answer to Wall Street was that they were gonna "double down on culture" to fix the attraction/retention problem...

Those two factors, fuel and schedule reduction, were almost certainly enough to go from black to red.

JetBlue doesn’t hedge fuel, while most other airlines do. Big ouch right now.

I don't know if I'd say "most". Some do, some don't. I believe JB has hedged fuel at points in the past and lost their a$$ in the process.

I honestly don’t understand this point. Aren’t we flying less than 2019 with about 10% more pilots on property? Is the 220 and SQ causing the problem there, or is it scheduling (5 hr days for pretty much everyone), or is it something else? Seems like it shouldn’t be a problem to fly less flights than we’ve done in the past with more pilots.

Well, the SQ does require 50% more pilots per hour... But it's a small fleet. There is a lot of inefficiency (pilot wise) with standing up a 3rd fleet with lots of training events (for all 3 fleets) and lots of people waiting for OE and A220 pilots having low block lines, reserves for 3 fleets instead of 2, etc... But I don't know if that is the full explanation or just part of it.

But it's a good question. All I know is they reduced the schedule, which directly raises CASM dramatically. Which is enough to lose money when coupled with high fuel costs.

This is definitely cheaper than paying your pilots and offering profit sharing.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/jetblue-route-cuts-nyc-florida/amp/

Yep...

The EWR cuts I think are also largely about the new terminal not being open and the scat-show the old terminal is. But not sure. Might be both the terminal+staffing+market underperformance.

Scat-show? I’m gonna miss those porta-potties next to the breast pumping pod inside EWR Terminal A!

The fact that we have more staffing than 2019 and less flights than 2019 but still having staffing problems probably points to schedule inefficiencies. Those days when our pairings were much better is not the case right now.

I think they’re planning on having it open week of Thanksgiving tentatively but early 2023 more realistically. I don’t see how Newark could be underperforming. The place seems like it should be a gold mine…flights are always full.

From what I’ve seen the last few months, since they took the schedule down, at least on the pilot side we are having very very few critical staffing days.

Agree. I think it is more staffing+terminal issues, throw in some high northeast fuel prices to boot.

That hell hole terminal is to give the people getting off the plane a preview of what’s to come and those leaving a last chance photo op of their trip.

"immediate"

LOL

Yeah boomer, because everyone flying into EWR has plans to hang out in the slums of Newark.

EWR, MCO, and JFK seem to be our worst airports at the moment. In that order. BOS (honorable
mention) is also getting pretty long in the tooth.

Lmao, ok that’s a fair point. 😂 More
immediate than the normal JB trajectory? Maybe?

Funny thing about MCO is that nasty carpet hasn’t changed since the early 80s. I remember that pattern of carpet in our terminal when I walked through there when I was like 5.

I’ll miss the burnt pizza smell, if they actually move to the new terminal in MCO…

You can buy it in sock form:

https://www.amazon.com/Orlando-Inter.../dp/B09J4JWDSS

:eek:….probably API puts those out.