If the head of the SSC committee leaving B6 after a decade here isn't a red flag for the Jetforward truthers I don't know what will get through to people.

 

Which one? There is a couple. Where are they going?

 

It’s in the latest MEC email sent out today. Not trying to be dismissive about losing someone that’s been here nine years, but I don’t see how losing someone in that position specifically is a sign of anything other than a young guy doing what he thinks is best for him and his family. That’s not to say I don’t think we’re in deep **** but leaving for another airline right now is not a risk free endeavor. I don’t know him personally but I hope whatever choice he made works out.

 

Forget about that position, a decade is a pretty significant amount of time to give up. Over a third the current life of the airline, possibly over a third of what will be the total life cycle of the airline. Don't know his age, but It has certainly another sign of the times.

 

He’s a pretty young guy with 27 years left.

 

Not to derail the convey but there isn’t much of a future at jetblue unless you believe the airline is merging. The leak has to signal the BOD, or those who are large stake holders, do not believe in JF.

 

I agree 100%. Even if JetForward was executed flawlessly and we lived in a vacuum where “headwinds” weren’t a constant factor it would still leave JetBlue as a niche carrier with a nice product but a poor network and no organic path to more market share and national relevance. We must, and in my opinion, will merge or be acquired. When and what that looks like exactly I have no idea, but the alternative is not great for anybody with skin in the JetBlue game.

 

I’m not someone with skin in the game, but can JetBlue survive as a small niche carrier? Might not be the steady growth, sunshine and rainbows career path that people want, but is there room for a small mom and pop store offering a good product among the giants? I’d think that there could be.

 

Possibly, however that airline is called Breeze.

 

I think many of us believed this was more or less JetBlue’s place in the market pre-Covid. I’m not sure anybody ever thought we were going to become a global powerhouse but we all expected (including management) to grow organically and to be a real national competitor and to be profitable by offering a better product than the large network carriers for a lower price. That reality changed drastically post Covid for all the reasons I think many on this forum are familiar with.
We play in some of the biggest sandboxes in the country in terms of operational cost that are consistently impacted by weather and ATC (the infamous unrelenting headwinds our leadership complains about every quarter). It makes it impossible to offer significantly better fares than larger carriers with large networks and ways to spread their cost and operation around and to do it profitably.
At some point we crossed a threshold where we are too big and our cost structure is way too high (not speaking of labor only, but the overall operational cost) to be a mom and pop operation. I think that’s why BlueDriver mentioned Breeze as being the airline you describe.
We cannot go backwards and shrink to become that airline anymore, but we also have no path to the growth we need to make our business model work outside of M&A. We are at critical mass here and I think it’s gotten to the point where even our managers, stakeholders, and most hard-core JetForward truthers understand this.