someone asked why should a new hire stay at JetBlue in a pocket session. They didn’t really have an answer other than we’d look better 5 years from now after we get past all these hurdles. But that’s assuming jet forward works but then what do we look like? Alaska on the east coast? So unless you’re senior and live in NY or BOS, why do you stay here? Long upgrades, degraded trips, low QoL. It’s still a gamble. We’re a failing startup that has to convince VCs to continue to invest so that one day we make a profit (drawing an analogy). Right now, from a financial standpoint and from those that have invested A LOT, the best bet for them is for us to get bought at $10-12/share. But the question is who buys us?
At this point getting to that price or even higher into the $20 requires us to make a profit and we’re not even estimated to break even until FY2027. That’s not even profit…. But I get it, we’re trying to do that. But even if we make money we still have a lot of debt and management likes to say we have cash but it’s borrowed cash. At 9.875% interest. So when we’re surviving on loans and the 30Y continuing to climb which makes our debt less attractive, it means we either gotta start printing money fast or we’re just going to keep getting crushed… I don’t think anyone is going to come save us. We can hope but that usually doesn’t work.

 

Oh, nobody should come here as a commuting newhire if they have a choice. Even in base I can’t make much of an argument. That said, I disagree it’s that bad here/that much better elsewhere that you *should* be jumping ship. Wanting to leave, totally get it, but “stupid it you stay” is just the worst of the internet, particularly APC.

 

I wasn't at JB but with Spirit for 10 years, and decided to leave the day the merger didn't work out. I went from commuting with NK to driving to a DL base. It was a though choice at first to give up all those years but I'm happy I had the move. Just like you, I have 20+ years left.

 

yeah there’s no reason to come here but if you’re already here it’s a personal choice to leave

 

It’s not hyperbole when we haven’t turned a profit in over 6 years!! And what does them having 40 airplanes have to do with anything? It means our losses are bigger and we are not too big to fail!

 

We’re a lot more valuable, though. JFK alone is objectively worth a lot more than a few gates in Milwaukee.

 

This is true. But an IROP means no money at all because we corned ourselves. Legacies have hubs everywhere to re route or just make money.
Crews stay together. The have multiple flights a day so the can cx 3/4 and get the rest out. Swapping EDCTs. A plane delayed in PHX say will avalanche because we can’t put those pax anywhere unlike legacies that don’t have to wait on inbound
Heck just JFK look at the fuel lost. We’re always burning more fuel than we want. They recovery time for IROPs is way shorter. Our business model is wound so tight and based on things being normal.

 

Jetblue market cap is $1.6B. How much of that $1.6B represents the value of the JFK gates?

 

We have a manager at United that sits in the Network Operations Center and his only job is to make sure that when we get EDCT's on high value or critical flights, to swap them with lower value or less critical flights. There are a ton of factors they look at, but its basically all done by software. All he does is call the FAA and asks them to swap specific EDCTs to minimize overall disruption based on numbers of connections, crew legalities, future aircraft usage, etc.

 

So does Jetblue, but all our planes come from the same regions so swaps are not as effective