JetBlue at J.P. Morgan Conference: JetFWD Strategy Unveiled

On Tuesday, 11 March 2025, JetBlue Airways Corp (NASDAQ: JBLU) presented its strategic vision at the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference 2025. The airline highlighted its JetFWD strategy, aimed at enhancing operational strengths and financial performance. While the company reported positive strides in service and margin improvements, challenges such as airspace issues in the Northeast were also addressed.

Key Takeaways

• JetBlue’s JetFWD strategy aims for a 5-point margin improvement by the end of 2025.
• The company plans to capture an incremental $200 million in EBIT from JetFWD.
• JetBlue’s loyalty program accounts for 12% of revenue and is a key asset.
• Network redeployment included closing 15 cities and shifting 50 routes in 2024.
• A domestic first product will launch in 2026, enhancing premium offerings.

Financial Results

JetBlue has focused on improving its financial metrics through the JetFWD strategy, which has already delivered a 3.5-point margin improvement by the end of 2024. The company anticipates an additional 1.5 points of margin expansion, totaling a 5-point improvement by the end of 2025, assuming stable economic conditions.

• Incremental EBIT of $200 million expected from JetFWD.
• Early EBIT capture of $90 million from preferred seating and Blue Basics changes.
• Loyalty program contributes 12% to total revenue, outperforming some competitors.

Operational Updates

JetBlue has made significant operational changes to enhance efficiency and customer experience.

• Redeployed 20% of its network, closing 15 cities and adjusting 50 routes.
• Improved service rankings, moving up three spots in the Wall Street Journal ranking.
• Implemented AI and technology for predictive maintenance and efficient flight planning.

Future Outlook

The airline is committed to maintaining flexibility in its operations to adapt to market changes. Key future initiatives include:

• Domestic first product launch in 2026, enhancing premium offerings.
• Cost transformation program targeting $175 million in savings through 2027.
• Continued focus on adapting capacity to economic conditions.

Q&A Highlights

During the conference, JetBlue addressed several critical issues:

• Challenges with airspace in the Northeast and New York, emphasizing technology and staffing improvements.
• Exploration of partnerships similar to traditional alliances, differing from the NEA model.
• Confidence in the sector’s preparedness for potential recessions due to strong balance sheets.

JetBlue remains focused on enhancing shareholder value and achieving profitability, with strategic initiatives like JetFWD playing a central role in its future plans.

For more detailed insights, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference 2025:

Jamie: All right, folks. As the day wears on, that’s when we start featuring the airlines whose stocks are actually managing to rise today. So very pleased to have the JetBlue team here today. I think Ursula, Joanna and Marty are household names at this point. So I’m very happy to turn the stage over.

I was a little worried about you guys not being able to get anything to eat. So

Marty, JetBlue: I think

Jamie: We’ll leave it at that.

Marty, JetBlue: It says registered trademark.

Jamie: Damn it.

: Thank you

Marty, JetBlue: for this. I was curious.

Joanna, JetBlue: Thanks, Jamie. That was so kind of you. Fortunately, there’s no Mini Mints that are branded. Okay. So welcome.

Very pleased to be here this morning. I just wanted to briefly touch on the demand environment. I know many carriers went before us and just wanted to reiterate that we are seeing what others are seeing. The peaks remain healthy. The troughs obviously are under pressure.

This was something that we actually were seeing back in our January earnings call, and I think that came through in our RASM guide. Our guide today, we’ve got a capacity down largely associated with storms in February, as well as self help measures that we took pulling capacity in March and April April as we saw the trough periods. We can we are maintaining our RASM and our CASM guide for the first quarter. So with that, I did want to pivot to JetFWD and talk a little bit about, our longer term strategy. We launched JetFWD in July.

So if you think about JetBlue, tremendous strength in the Northeast, a brand that is loved, Northeast Of Florida, The Caribbean. We’ve got a nice franchise transit Transcontinental with our Mint product, And then, obviously, our Transatlantic routes are performing nicely, given that we’ve made some capacity adjustments to better reflect the seasonality of those routes. The culture, obviously, an important pillar for JetBlue, an important advantage that we have. The product, something that I think we can all agree is strong, although always opportunities to improve it, and then just the overall leisure franchise. So JetForward is really based upon how do we enhance the inherent strengths of JetBlue, and get more value out of out of those strengths.

And so with that, we launched JetFWD in July. It has four pillars. The first pillar is reliable and caring service. Historically, leisure customers were less focused on on time performance. Since COVID, it’s now a top three driver of choice, for customers, even leisure customers.

Building the best East Coast leisure network, so most certainly, leaning into our strengths with the Failed Spirit transaction. Our focus is now on building regional scale, regional relevance in the places where our brand is, loved and known. Offering the products and perks that customers value is the third pillar. There’s a host of initiatives that I’ll talk about in a minute around that particular pillar and then securing our financial future. Having a low cost structure is essential, for JetBlue.

We have to maintain a lower cost than the legacy carriers who enable us to thrive in the markets where we compete against them. When we look at when we launched JetBlue, the margin read through the operating margin read through would have been down 4.5 points. We ended 2024 down one. So a three and a half point margin improvement, from the launch of JetFWD. Assuming a stable economic environment, the midpoint of our guide this year is point five, so an additional one and a half points of margin expansion over the year For a total of five points through the end of twenty twenty five, assuming again a stable macro environment, since we launched JetFWD back in July.

I think as we’ve, evidenced in years past but also this year, to the extent that there are changes in the macro environment, we will pull the necessary levels to adjust capacity. We pulled two and a half points out of March. We pulled a bit out of April, to address some of the trough softness that we were seeing, and we’re committed to that. We are going to adjust the business to maintain a level of flexibility to reflect changing, changing environments. This is a multiyear plan.

It is not a linear plan. It is not consistent through the quarters. It’s a three plus year plan that gets JetBlue back on the right track with structural changes so that we can start driving, long term value for our shareholders. This is a summary of the pillars and some of the initiatives that we executed to you in 2024, along with what we expect to focus on in 2025. ’24 was a year of immense change, and I’m really proud of the accomplishments the team has made, particularly around the first pillar, reliable and caring service.

When you look at, that particular pillar, we saw some meaningful improvements there. We moved up off of the bottom of the list for a 14. We moved up three spots in the Wall Street Journal ranking, so the most improved airline. And we are back at the top of the list for net promoter score with a 10 improvement in net promoter score for 2024. We are absolutely focused on continuing these trends and continuing the investments that are needed, so that we can return JetBlue back to a far more reliable airline as well as one where you see a lot more smiles and providing caring service from our crew members.

Some of the ways that we’re gonna go about doing this are schedule investments and enhanced scheduling tools, all buttressed by our data science team. We’re rolling out new technology that will enable our mechanics to better predict out of service events, better troubleshoot events, which will reduce the amount of out of service time and hopefully, reduce the number of maintenance cancellations. And then we have a real push this year around hospitality across our crew members. That is one area where we think JetBlue has a distinct advantage or our people. I mean, I think if you fly us, you see that our people bring a lot of personality, to our airline, and really do care about serving customers in the best way possible.

And we’re seeing that through improved net promoter score rankings. The second pillar, best East Coast leisure network, we redeployed 20% of the network this year. So a very meaningful set of network changes. We redeployed 50 routes. We closed 15 cities, the majority of which was implemented in quarter four.

And so 2025 is about seeing those, those changes really scale and mature throughout the year. The third pillar, products and perks. This year, we saw 90,000,000 of early EBIT capture associated with our preferred seating rollout this year along with changes to Blue Basics. So we put the carry on bag back in the Blue Basic fare, which enables us to have more competitive positioning on places like Google Flights, and we’re seeing a strong improvement there. In 2025, we expect to continue to see those initiatives ramp, as well as the launch of even more space as a cabin in the first quarter.

We launched the premier card in January as well, and we will be launching the JFK Lounge later this year. I’ll talk about Mini Minute slash Junior Minute in a minute, Jamie. And then the fourth pillar, really proud of what the team is doing around costs. We met all quarters, all quarter our cost goals for all four quarters last year and for the full year. And this year, we’re gonna be launching a larger cost transformation program through 2025.

In all, we expect to capture an incremental 200,000,000 of EBIT, assuming again a macro backdrop that is stable from Jet Forward, and we are extremely proud of the progress that we’re seeing so far. So turning to our onboard product. At the end of the day, we want to be able to serve a whole category of customers and the product evolution is just that. We implemented blue basic changes. We’ve implemented even more as a cabin, and then we’ve announced our domestic first product.

It will not be called Mini Mint or Junior Mint, unfortunately, but we are taking suggestions. You can send them to Marty, if you have an idea about what it should be called. The Domestic First product will be rolled out in 2026, beginning in 2026 on all non Mint aircraft. It will complement the recent changes that we’ve made to the cabin. And at the end of the day, it’s really about better utilizing the square footage on our aircraft while keeping our costs low.

It also complements the premium card and the introduction of lounges. We have ten years of serving the premium customer through our Mint product, and we know there’s a demand for this. The number of seats will, you know, stay the same or grow on the aircraft, and the seat pitch will be equivalent, at or better than the legacy carriers for, the rollout of our Mint product. We’re very excited to see this happen. It does take some time with, with, approvals and getting the seats, the seats ordered.

And then finally, our cost transformation program. Maintaining a cost structure, is absolutely essential to our business model, especially during a period of time where we have low growth, associated with the GTF groundings from Pratt and Whitney. We’ve demonstrated a very strong commitment to this. As I’ve mentioned, we hit all four quarter cost guides and the annual cost guide last year even in the face of, even in the face of some capacity challenges due to the aircraft and, an accounting change associated with Pratt and Whitney compensation. In 2025, we begin the new cost transformation program, which will drive an incremental hundred and 75,000,000 of savings through 2027 as part of JetFWD.

There are three areas I’m gonna touch on with regard to the cost program to give you a sense of the types of initiatives that, underpin this particular pillar. The first is increased productivity. And I think a lot of people talk about increased productivity, but we have very specific IT investments associated with driving this. For customer support, it’s continuing to roll out AI so that we can drive more self-service for our crew members and our call center, but also customer self-service on our app. We’re targeting another eight to 10 points of self service shift this year.

In maintenance, we’re gonna be providing pilots with, tools that will enable them to better troubleshoot, onboard the aircraft through their iPads so that we can reduce the amount of time it takes, to troubleshoot and resolve, maintenance problems, which in turn should reduce, out of service events. We will then turn to predictive maintenance, and then workload and parts optimization. In our system operations center, we’re focused on leveraging AI to do things like manage gate demand. So at JFK, if you have a aircraft arriving early and there’s not a gate, that would be a miss on, on time performance, or potentially the ability to recapture minutes in the day. So we have a tool that’s enabling us to better manage gate demand at places like JFK and then a tool that’s also enabling us to make better delay, swap, and cancel recommendations.

So a lot of variables behind, whether you choose to cancel or swap or delay a flight. And some of those variables can go two and three days out into the future, consisting of perhaps a broken crew pairing or an aircraft not getting back to a maintenance space, in time. So this tool enable our people in system operations to make better decisions because it considers more variables associated with, those particular, those particular decisions. Fuel optimization, we we launched technology last year on our pilot iPads that allows them to choose the most efficient flight plan for routing. This new technology’s access through the iPad.

It was rolled out last year, and we’re seeing tremendous adoption among our pilots, this year and look to start seeing the benefits of, greater fuel efficiency in 2025. And then finally, contract management. We’re creating a center of excellence, that can drive more value from our contracts. So thinking about how do we include all the decision making terms of contracts into a data science tool so that we can enhance our negotiating power when we’re at the table negotiating large contracts, improve contract compliance, to ensure that we are getting what we deserve under service level agreements when there are service failures, and then early detection of supply chain challenges to help better mitigate, some of those issues down the road. In all, I’m extremely pleased with the progress the team has made.

You know, we launched this less than a year ago, and we are very much focused on driving shareholder value and getting JetBlue back on track and driving long term earnings, for our crew members, our customers, and our shareholders. The, you know, we’ll remain nimble and adjust to the changing macro environment. As I mentioned, it’s a long term plan and progress will not be linear. But I think we’ve demonstrated and will continue to demonstrate that we will act quickly to pivot our plan to adjust to the changing environment, while evaluating all levers, that are necessary to ensure that we keep Jet Forward on track, including better managing our fixed costs. For example, we offer early retirement packages for our pilots voluntary programs for many of our crew members to take time off during cost through the trough period.

And then I’ll just add, I think fuel could potentially be a tailwind to the plan, to the extent that we see some macroeconomic pressures. So just wanted to thank you for the time today. We’re really pleased with the progress. This is a team that is focused on execution, driving a sense of urgency, to ultimately get Blue get JetBlue back to a path of profitability. So with that, Jamie, over to you.

Jamie: So kickoff, but So I do have a question on domestic first class. So it took Delta over a decade to monetize the front cabin. And I can’t remember the exact date, but when they first started, I think, paid load factor upfront was, I don’t know, 13%. Now it’s in the 70s, okay? But it took a long time.

I would assume from JetBlue’s perspective, since consumers have already learned that they may have to pay up for this product, that it’s not going to take you a decade. But is there any scenario where you have to give it away at first just to build familiarity with the product? And does that factor into any of your internal projections?

Marty, JetBlue: Hey, Jamie. Thanks for the question.

Jamie: You just turn it on and everyone buys it. Yeah.

Marty, JetBlue: Sorry. I’ll say a few things. First of all, you know, we’re not here to announce any of the details of how, Junior Mini Mint is gonna be, as you call it. But I would talk about the history of first class monetization. And we obviously watch this very closely.

And at the time that Delta did that, we already started with the even more space product, now even more. And then four years into it, we went with Mint. So we have a lot of experience in the whole upgrade world. And frankly, my personal opinion, looking at what happened over the ten year period, is that they had to deconstruct a model where customers expected to get it for free. We never did that.

In fact, from the very beginning of Mint, one of the things that I had made as a tenant of that product is that we will price it to maximize the RASM of payload factor. So that’s why you regularly see three digit fares in Mint, where it’s, you know, four digit fares begin with a two in competitive airlines. Because our view of the world is we did not want the barbell of, you know, four people paying $2,000 and 12 people on upgrades. So we’ve not, we never set that precedent. Now I will say that we are excited about the product we’re going to be offering.

I think given the experience that we’ve had with Even More and with Mint, we have complete confidence that our customer base will love it. Our surveys are showing our customers want it. And one thing it’s also worth noting is that, and we said it a couple of times and I want to stress it again, the total number of premium seats in the airplane is not going up. The quality of the seats is going up because there’ll be, you know, two or three rows of the domestic first class product in the front of the airplane. But we are not dramatically increasing our exposure to premium products.

What we are increasing is the quality of the revenue we get. So

: a couple of things, Marty and Joanna to start. Washington, D. C, New York airspace, do you sense that over the next four years, there will be material progress made given the turnover in transportation, the hope for FAA modernization or traffic control, etcetera. Obviously, you’re acutely impacted by this.

Joanna, JetBlue: Yep. Thanks for the question. I think more than acutely, we’re the most impacted by it because of the footprint that we have in the Northeast, let alone New York, where as a percent of our network, we have more exposure to New York than anybody else. So unfortunately, I think the tragic accident at DCA has drawn a lot of attention to the issue, rightfully or wrongfully in that accident because the decision on what happened is not out yet, but drawn a lot of attention to the issue of staffing. I mean, we’ve been, you know, screaming from the top of the mountain for the five years.

There’s a problem with staffing. There’s a problem with staffing. And, and I’m pleased to see the amount of attention it’s getting in the public, because it’s something that’s hard to understand. And I think, frankly, the traveling public understands it better now, but also, with the Department of Transportation. So, you know, the three areas that need to be addressed are staffing.

I could say staffing, staffing, staffing, but it’s staffing, it’s technology, and then continuous funding, to support technology improvements and a robust staffing pipeline. And so, I do think it’s getting traction. At the end of the day, the staffing issue just pumping more people through the Oklahoma Center is not going to fix things. They need to get the career college programs off the ground running. We have lots of students out there who want to be air traffic controllers, who were born to be air traffic controllers, and we need to make sure all those pipelines are very robust and and generating air traffic controllers to ultimately fix the situation because there’s not enough capacity in Oklahoma, and the failure rate is quite high there.

So I’m optimistic, but we haven’t seen anything yet.

: And so sticking with Washington theme here, obviously, American is appealing the NEA decision. You and the team have been vocal about exploring partnerships. So just maybe give some insights into are there parallel teams? Is there one team that’s still thinking about what could happen with American if they’re successful while you have other efforts underway with other airlines to explore potentially what could be done? And and what is a sense of timing and urgency for all this?

Joanna, JetBlue: Yeah. So we’ve been quite vocal that we are exploring partnerships in general with a number of carriers, and the construct would not look like the Northeast Alliance. It would look more like a traditional partnership. And is there a sense of urgency? Yes, there is, but we need to make sure we have the right construct for JetBlue.

With regard to the decision, the the petition for certiorari, on the American case, you know, my understanding is American’s concern about the precedent that the case is sending, that could extend to even other partnerships. So that particular case, if decided, won’t have a direct impact on JetBlue, because we terminated the Northeast Alliance several years back. But it could serve as better precedent in the future for other types of partnerships down the road.

: And Ursula, a question for you. Most people in the room hopefully know at this point that we think your loyalty debt, dollars 2,000,000,000 of it is very attractive, given where it’s yielding right now. I think there’s been a lot of noise regarding your balance sheet strategy. I want to clarify a couple of things, right? There was a shelf that was filed.

Do you have any need to tap any further capacity in the loyalty financing to raise incremental liquidity? Can you talk about how the events of the first quarter, since you put in place that financing and your liquidity walk and cash flow walk, has it been materially altered by any of these results? How are you thinking about liquidity right now?

Ursula, JetBlue: Yes. So thanks for the question. So as a reminder, we raised over $3,000,000,000 last August. We utilized the loyalty program, and we also did, a convert offering. That that was really to give us runway to execute on the jet forward strategy.

So the intent to that financing was to fund the 24 deliveries that that we’re taking here in 2025. So the shelf registration was just an administrative filing. Our our previous shelf was expiring, so we just re upped the shelf. There there is no need at the moment for additional liquidity. Obviously, we’re watching the the environment, which continues to be pretty fluid.

You know, we’ll continue to assess and scenario play, if we need liquidity, if we do end up in a recession. I think the, what gives me a lot of comfort is we we’ve got over $5,000,000,000 of unencumbered assets. About a third of that is good, healthy aircraft and engine collateral. We we could tap incremental loyalty, but we also have, you know, our slots, gates, and routes and our brand. And And so the unencumbered asset base gives me a lot of comfort if we do head into a recessionary period.

We do have many different levers to pull if we do need liquidity.

: So and just a follow-up on loyalty. I think it was Mike Leskinen sort of referred to United and maybe someone else made a comment about there’s a few loyalty programs out there, implication, United, Delta, American that have tremendous value that’s sort of locked up in the enterprise. Would you put your loyalty program and your loyalty economics in that same category of margin and importance and so forth? Because I think there’s this view that loyalty just isn’t as important to JetBlue. I think the numbers sort of indicate otherwise, but maybe you can clarify that.

Ursula, JetBlue: Yes. I’m happy to start and then Marty can add on. It’s a significant asset to JetBlue, and I think that there’s a good amount of runway to continue to grow the program. I mean, it’s 12% of our revenue, which actually is a stat that is higher than a few of our legacy friends. And so we do view it as valuable.

Marty and and the team have a significant road map, that is contributing to JetFWD over the next three years in how we continue, to grow the program. Maybe over to you, Marty, to give a little color. Yeah.

Marty, JetBlue: I do want it’s funny. I I I’m amused every time I hear this question because if you look at the percentage of total revenue, we are outperforming some airlines you may have mentioned in that in that, question. So I feel great where we are. And moreover, I feel great knowing that we have a currency that does not have the same utility as some of our competitors. You know, it’s very difficult to redeem to a lot of parts of the world, with true blue points versus some of the the the the legacy big legacy airlines.

And frankly, to me, that’s one of the big opportunities about our partnership program. You know, we never really got through the full implementation of the NEA because the judge struck it down before we were able to offer that to our customers. But just from what we saw in the beginning of the NEA, we recognize the value of a loyalty partnership. So, obviously, people get excited about codeshare and interline and all the things that are normal partnership things. But I think for me, equally important in whatever partnership we do will be being able to give a lot more opportunity to our most loyal customers.

Jamie: So one of your competitors earlier today, the context was actually Southwest because they’re starting to charge for bags and it was Scott Kirby, the point he made is that to fix Southwest, you need to charge for bags and stop flying routes that lose money. So the context wasn’t JetBlue, but it got me thinking about JetBlue. And my perception is that there used to be a higher tolerance for lost production internally at the company. I don’t know if you agree with that. But would you have any data that you could share?

So the first day that you took over, Joanna, what percentage of capacity was money losing? And what’s that number today? And I know it’s a little unfair because part of the capacity has been redeployed, so new markets need to so it’s not necessarily apples to apples. But all of the JET four data was very helpful. But can you give us a sense for how loss production throughout the network has changed with you at the helm?

Joanna, JetBlue: Yeah. I think, we’re probably not going to share that data. But maybe let me speak more broadly to how we’re thinking about the network, and then, Marty, feel free to chime in. So part of the challenge we had when we were trying to acquire Spirit was that, we couldn’t make a lot of network changes without potentially undermining the legal arguments that we had. And so we sort of froze the network.

And, the other piece is had that transaction been successful, there would have been cities that may have been underperforming for JetBlue, but would have done better with the combined entity. So, well, yeah, Los Angeles short haul is the best example. I think we actually gave that example last year because we just announced we were closing it. Los Angeles short haul had underperformed for a very long time for JetBlue, and we had been sort of making changes around the edges. Then we announced that we were going to acquire Spirit.

They had a nice footprint in Los Angeles, so the combined, JetBlue Spirit footprint would have probably produced better results given the breadth there. When that transaction failed, we took action immediately. I do think, I personally, Marty, that to me, we have less tolerance for underperforming routes when you’re not growing, and every one of those planes needs to be productive. You’ve got to have a high threshold for for where you fly. And so you’re seeing that.

Also the trough peak dynamic, post COVID, the troughs are definitely longer and so and a bit deeper. And so as we think about mitigating losses in the troughs, that’s been a real priority for us. And so it’s not just about how we where we fly, but also day of week, flexibility, pulling capacity day of week when we need to. So you’ve got a team that’s very focused on being more dynamic now to, to get JetBlue back to profitability. We cannot rest on our laurels anymore.

So I do think we we would wait longer, but some of that was also spirit related.

Marty, JetBlue: Yeah. I actually don’t even agree with the the premise of the question in the first place. I mean, if you go back and look at our margins in the teens, we had margins in the teens. And, you know, I I left in 2019. COVID came in 2020.

And between COVID and the Spirit transaction, we were sort of frozen, back to Joanna’s point. And I don’t think anything’s changed in tolerance. I mean, I think we were frozen during that period. We unfroze and change came very, very quickly. So my view of the world is we have laid out in JetFWD a plan that if you add these numbers together, gets us back to double digit margins.

So that is the path we’re on. We are completely focused on JetFWD, and we’ve got a plan that’s going to get us where we need to be.

: Marty, we’ve talked in the past about bag fees and Southwest reluctance to charge for them. They’re up next. Big reveal this morning, we’ve all seen it. I know you have an exact number. You’re not going to share it with us, right?

But when we think about, right, what bag fees at Southwest does for JetBlue, right, just what can you tell us?

Joanna, JetBlue: I We could we could throw the question in the back to the room. Yeah.

Marty, JetBlue: We have people more qualified to answer that question in the room, I believe. No. Listen, I my my job is to manage JetBlue, it’s not to manage Southwest. And I, I’ll hold my view of what they’re doing. I mean, every airline is focused on the same thing, which is getting returns above our cost of capital and making sure that we have happy investors.

So, you know, we’re doing it, Southwest is doing it, everybody’s doing it. And we all have our own paths depending on our starting point. Our path is yet forward. Southwest is the path that they talked about this morning. And I have no stones to throw at anyone’s path.

We’re all focused on making sure we have happy investors. And

: one thing that I noticed when you had the comparison of your cabinet configuration up and you were very clear to reinforce the fact that your number of premium seats isn’t going to change when you roll out domestic first class and so forth. When you think about the back of the plane in adding a more premium product, is there any further decontenting that you need to do at the back, given that you’re increasing the content upfront, if you will? Do you feel that your BlueBasic product is where it needs to be relative to the competitive environment?

Marty, JetBlue: Well, we just made a gigantic change to BlueBasic and adding the carry on bag back. And to me, that was a seminal move as far as making BlueBasic more competitive. And as Joanna said, we are very happy with the results as far as share we’ve captured in BlueBasic, and we’ve not seen degradation from the Blue Fair. And that was really the only thing we’re concerned about was buy down, and it’s absolutely resonant creative. I will say in general, what we are seeing as a company and I think we’re seeing as an industry is that certainly for those of us who have premium products, again, Southwest in different place, but for those of us who have premium products, it is a barbell.

You’ve got a a lot of demand at the very bottom and you’ve got a lot of demand at the top and not as much in the middle. And that differentiation between the premium products and the non premium products, I think, is more distinct than it has been over the last ten or fifteen years. But again, this is the responsible customers want. And frankly, we continue to tweak our product like Mint. We continue to be very happy with it.

And I look forward to see doing the same thing with domestic first Junior Mini Mint.

: So and last one for me in that regard. So I’m now back and forth between Boston and New York, but I’m up in Boston now. I’m flying you even more, more so than ever. Listen, if you have Mint service, I’m buying it full fare, I’m flying it, right? It’s a great product.

And I’m a quintessential corporate traveler, right? I know you’re embracing your leisure roots and so forth, right? But is there still a corporate opportunity for JetBlue? What is your corporate what is the corporate sales force at this point and so forth? Because as you embrace leisure, I mean, today, the market weakness, right, the quarterly weakness is driven by leisure, right, not as much by corporate to some degree, I guess, we can argue that, right.

But just sort of thinking about, have you abandoned all corporate efforts at this point? Like is the corporate sales force out there trying to generate, you know, what some might argue is a stickier part of the demand curve?

Joanna, JetBlue: Yeah. I mean, we definitely still have our corporate workforce out there. It’s the same size it was, you know, pre COVID, post COVID. And so they remain focused on those opportunities. We have a product that works for everybody.

And so we are focused on capturing, you know, every customer where the schedule works well for them. At the end of the day, you know, the routes that we fly tend to be predominantly leisure and hence the strategy around, you know, best East Coast leisure network. But that’s not to say we’re not capturing our fair share of business customers on those routes where maybe they need to go to a leisure location or TransCon, as you mentioned. There are some markets out of Boston that just underperformed, and the amount of even business customers on them was very thin. And so we decided those assets will be better deployed to leisure markets.

But we serve everybody and we have a product that I think speaks to everybody. But in the spirit of being focused on the network, you see a largely leisure footprint.

Jamie: Anybody else from the audience before I ask a final question? So Ursula, you mentioned the R word recession, I believe twice in one of the answers you were given. What do you think the next recession looks like for the airline industry? And the reason I ask is that prior recessions have all followed a fairly similar script. Some were more severe, the duration has changed.

But usually corporate demand would dry up, the big three would suffer, discounters would fare okay, big three would have to issue equity because they were starting from a lower liquidity and margin. You fast forward to today, and clearly, you’re not doing as well as you’d like to, but you also don’t have negative 22% operating margins. How does the competitive dynamic play out in the next US downturn?

Ursula, JetBlue: Yeah. No. It’s a really good question. I probably mentioned it twice in my response because I’m just looking through the lens of risk. Right?

I think where the sector is today is very different than than prior recessions. Right? We’re we’re in this environment where capacity is at a high level constrained already. Right? Like, given the OEM challenges.

And so I do think as you look here at the domestic US landscape, capacity is already depressed. Obviously, the biggest lever is to start pulling more capacity. I do think, generally speaking, you know, we all have decently strong balance sheets. So I think, you know, we could weather this a lot better than previous recessions. I think, you know, the convergence of the business models also is playing into the environment as well.

And so I think, unfortunately, it will be much tougher for others. But, you know, I feel good about the JetBlue model and the plan that we have and the multiyear strategy. And even in a depressed environment, I still think that we can make good progress on the path that we’re

Marty, JetBlue: on. Okay.

Jamie: All right. That runs down the clock. JetBlue, thank you very much.

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