JetBlue at Morgan Stanley Conference: Positive Outlook Amid Challenges

On Thursday, 11 September 2025, JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ:JBLU) presented at Morgan Stanley’s 13th Annual Laguna Conference, delivering a strategic overview of its third-quarter performance. The company reported strong results driven by peak season demand and operational improvements, while also acknowledging ongoing challenges and a long road to recovery.

Key Takeaways

• JetBlue’s transformation plan is yielding positive results with a $180 million EBIT contribution since July.
• Fort Lauderdale is a key growth market, with plans to expand to 113 flights per day.
• The strategic partnership with United Airlines, Blue Sky, aims to enhance operational capabilities.
• Operational reliability has improved, with JetBlue ranking as the most improved airline in the Wall Street Journal rankings.
• The company is focused on long-term financial goals, including reducing debt and generating positive free cash flow.

Financial Results

• JetBlue tightened its Q3 guidance due to favorable weather conditions in August.
• Revenue and controllable cost guidance midpoints have improved.
• The company aims to achieve $290 million in EBIT contribution from its transformation plan by year-end.
• JetBlue has consistently met or exceeded unit cost targets for the past seven quarters.
• No Q4 guidance was provided during the call.

Operational Updates

• Significant improvements in operational reliability have been noted, with a double-digit increase in Customer Net Promoter Score (NPS).
• A network change of 20% last year is currently ramping up.
• Expansion in Fort Lauderdale will increase flights to 113 per day, serving 49 cities.
• JetBlue plans to introduce lounges later this year and Domestic First Class in 2026.
• The company is implementing around 100 cost initiatives utilizing AI and data science tools.
• A competitive challenge was faced in San Juan from a ULCC.

Future Outlook

• Fort Lauderdale is considered for further expansion to 140-150 flights a day.
• The partnership with United Airlines is seen as a strategic advantage.
• JetBlue aims for full benefits of its transformation by 2028, with growth resuming in 2026.
• The GTF engine issue is expected to be resolved by the end of 2027.
• The company aspires to break even by 2026 and improve its operating margin and free cash flow.

Q&A Highlights

• JetBlue competes effectively against ULCCs in Fort Lauderdale.
• Domestic First Class is expected to be available by mid-2026.
• The peak of aircraft on ground (AOG) issues will occur in 2025, with improvements expected in 2026 and resolution by 2027.

In conclusion, JetBlue Airways remains committed to its strategic goals and improving financial performance. For more detailed insights, refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - Morgan Stanley’s 13th Annual Laguna Conference:

Unidentified speaker: I’m going to actively fall asleep.

Ursula Hurley, CFO, JetBlue Airways: Yeah.

Unidentified speaker: Great. Back to the airline track here. Next up, we have JetBlue Airways, and very happy to have with us Marty St. George, President, and Ursula Hurley, CFO. Thanks so much for being here.

Ursula Hurley, CFO, JetBlue Airways: Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Unidentified speaker: Yes, fun times in the airline space. I think that you guys did have an update that you put out this morning or a slide deck. I don’t know if you want to open up with some prepared remarks?

Ursula Hurley, CFO, JetBlue Airways: Sure. Yeah, happy to open up. We actually had a guidance update last week on the third quarter. We actually tightened our range on capacity. We had really good weather in the August time frame. We improved the midpoint of our revenue guide by a point and a quarter. We also improved the midpoint of our controllable cost guide. All in all, the quarter is performing very well. Marty, you’ll talk a little bit about the demand environment, but things have been strong and working well. Second, I just want to highlight our progress on JetBlue Airways. Thus far, since the launch of the program last July, we’ve achieved $180 million in EBIT contribution. The ultimate goal is to deliver $850 million to $950 million in EBIT by the end of 2027.

We have four priority moves that are performing really well, and we’re seeing good proof points that the strategy is working and delivering earnings contribution. Our operational reliability has significantly improved. We were actually the airline that got most improved in terms of the Wall Street Journal rankings. As a result, our customer Net Promoter Score has been up double digits in the first half of this year. In terms of our network, we changed 20% of our network last year. That is in ramp-up mode. We also had a very exciting Fort Lauderdale announcement, which Marty will talk about in a moment. In terms of our products and perks, we continue to roll out customer-friendly options to get people to pay more to drive top-line revenue. We’re rolling out lounges later this year. We have Domestic First Class coming out next year.

We’ve also seen great progress in terms of preferred seating and our Even More Seating improvements. The last priority move is obviously the cost structure. We’ve got about 100 initiatives across the board that really lean into AI, data science tools. The team’s doing really well in execution. We’ve had seven quarters of unit cost beats or hits across the last seven quarters. Really pleased with the progress. All in all, $180 million since the launch of the program we’ve achieved. By the end of this year, we hope to achieve $290 million. Good progress. Maybe I’ll hand it over to Marty just to talk about Fort Lauderdale.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah, I think you have a QR code that will take you to our deck for those of you who hadn’t seen it. The last page of the deck does show an announcement we made this week about additional growth in Fort Lauderdale. Long story short, we had, before COVID, made an announcement about getting Lauderdale up to 150 flights a day. Between COVID, the Northeast Alliance (NEA), various other things, we sort of took a pause on that. We’ve also had some pretty significant gate constraint problems in Fort Lauderdale. As our biggest competitor there has started to pull down and luckily open up some gate capacity for us, we’re taking advantage of it. We are going to have, I think, our biggest schedule ever in Lauderdale this winter: 113 flights a day, 49 cities served. I think it’s the third tranche of growth we’ve announced there.

The first two were announced earlier this summer. We’re actually very bullish on the market. One of the things that I think is feedback we’ve gotten a lot of as a company, especially when we talk about things like the Wall Street Journal rankings, is, you know, very, very overexposed to the northeastern U.S., with the two biggest focus cities: Boston and New York. We’re actually optimistic that Fort Lauderdale could actually be the third sort of tentpole operation for us at, you know, $140 to $150 a day and counting. We’re actually very positive about the opportunity there. We think it’s going to be a good move for future diversification of the revenue streams.

Unidentified speaker: Great, thank you both for that. I have follow-ups on both those topics. Before we get there, maybe we can just summarize your update from last week, which is obviously, as you said, kind of raising the revenue guide. Was it just weather was better than expected? Are you seeing any improvement in the actual underlying demand patterns as well?

Unidentified speaker: I think if you go back to our second quarter earnings call, where we overshaped pretty significantly from our guide, we made it clear that we had seen float demand strengths really from Memorial Day forward. I think if you listen to any of the leisure-focused airlines, you will hear us all talk about the dynamics between peak and trough. In general, peaks are doing well and troughs are not. I think that’s very typical of this type of demand environment. As everybody knows, we took a pretty big demand setback in early 2025 after Labor Day, and the industry is still recovering from that. We’re still definitely not back to where we were in 2024. We did see the float demand coming in during the peak, and really, the summer represents a continual peak, really from Memorial Day until the third week of August.

It’s a pretty strong peak period. I think when we guided the third quarter, we were cautious about what we should expect for September. We certainly saw this float strength starting in the peak and really right from Memorial Day peak. We weren’t sure it was going to continue to September. As it turns out, it has continued past Labor Day. From that perspective, we were comfortable taking the guide up. I think, in a lot of ways, the guide is very much consistent with the overall strength we’ve seen in revenue performance for the last 18 months or so. You know, a couple of blips. Certainly, the first quarter was a tough revenue period. In general, I think we’re feeling very optimistic as far as what we’re seeing in the revenue side.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Any sense on the lookout from here, kind of October, maybe even into the holiday season, to the extent that you can see it? Any sense of where that continues with actual rates?

Unidentified speaker: It’s a little early for us now. We’re about 25% booked for the fourth quarter, and even that 25% is pretty heavily booked in the first six to eight weeks of the quarter versus Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s a little bit early to say. I think, in general, what we’ve seen since COVID is a compression of the advanced booking period to be a little bit closer in. Even with the strength we’ve seen since May, it’s been even more close in than before. We’re not ready to give a fourth quarter guide at this point. We’ll do that in our third quarter earnings call. Certainly, if we look at what we’re seeing in the third quarter, we’re seeing the float strength persist.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Can you just remind us about, from a comm perspective, both sequential and year-over-year, CrowdStrike last year, as well as any Newark benefits in 2Q? Kind of how does that trend in the second, three and Q?

Unidentified speaker: Sure. We did get some good Newark benefits this year, and we called it out in a second quarter call. Excuse me, Newark benefits this year. We did call that out. It was pretty transient, and it went away relatively quickly. We had a very good Newark benefit last year, which, when we did our adjusted sequential second and third quarter, we did call that out specifically. That’s one of the reasons why we’re somewhat cautious as far as what to expect in the third quarter, because we knew we were up against a tough comp. I think third quarter certainly performed better than we had hoped, and I think we’re actually very positive about what we’re seeing right now.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. You just said something very important, which is, when you guys gave your guide, your 4Q appeared to be a lot, I want to say, more conservative, as much as I’d say less optimistic than some of your domestic peers in terms of the ramp that they expect in the 4Q. A, how much of that is you guys being conservative? B, how much of that is you guys having a tougher comp?

Unidentified speaker: To be clear, we did not give a 4Q guide. We did not give an annual guide.

Unidentified speaker: Well.

Unidentified speaker: We did give an ASM guide.

Unidentified speaker: Yes, yes.

Unidentified speaker: The ASM guide, to me, is consistent with what we’re seeing from the industry overall. I know my competitors have said this too, because it’s been reported to us during the one-on-ones. They’re seeing good premium revenues and tough revenue in the back of the bus. Frankly, that’s what we’re seeing as well. When you see low revenue performance at the back of the airplane, the number one driver for that is capacity. Our view of the world is we’re well under 10% of the industry capacity, but we only control what we control. From that perspective, we want to be conservative with capacity, because we do recognize that we are still negative year-over-year rather than our third quarter number. Nobody wants to be there. From that perspective, I can’t speak for how the rest of the world is guiding the fourth quarter.

We’ve certainly seen some pretty aggressive guides out there. We’ll see how those play out. That was not the way we wanted to manage the fourth quarter.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Speaking of how you want to manage the fourth quarter, how are you guys on your capacities? That ASM guide, is that loaded, finalized, locked? What do you think of the rest of the industry?

Unidentified speaker: I’d say the guide we have right now matches pretty well what’s selling in the OAG. I know there’ll be some tweaks out there, but the wholesale changes have really happened. Obviously, we’ll be giving better guidance in the third quarter call for all the stats.

Unidentified speaker: Do you think the industry needs to come out more?

Unidentified speaker: It’s not my place to tell the industry how to run their businesses.

Unidentified speaker: If you could.

Unidentified speaker: I would not want to take any legal risk for something to get out like that. I will say, I’ve said this a couple of one-on-ones, there are some hockey sticks out there of performance that we’ll see how that shakes out. I think, based on what we’re seeing, I would be surprised to see if those were to come true.

Unidentified speaker: Understood. Just one more follow-up. You and your peers noted that closing obviously collapsed in February and March, and has accelerated again since then. Does it feel like this is now the new normal? Or does it feel like that’s something that’ll still ebb and flow with macro or other issues?

Unidentified speaker: That’s a great question. We ask that question every single week when we look at our bookings. It’s going to continue as long as it continues. It is very clear that in the post-COVID world, booking curves have changed pretty dramatically. Our view is to best reflect what the consumers do, not change it. If it’s not consumers want to book, that’s fine. If you notice in our results, we’re still slightly down in load factor year over year. We’re catching up on the revenue side because the closer revenue is coming in. Personally, from a guidance perspective, I wish they’d book further out. From a revenue perspective, booking closer in is good because we get higher fares for it. It is a trade-off. My only assumption is when people are consciously paying more money to book closer in, it’s because of uncertainty and concern.

Hopefully, things will settle down to acceptance of where the economic situation is and that we may see things revert to the mean a little bit more. I’m not predicting it. I’m just recognizing that we’re off that trend right now.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Just going back to your opening comments, Fort Lauderdale is obviously very opportunistic there given your competitors’ issues. Any other opportunities, any other routes or regions out there that you think you can do the same thing?

Unidentified speaker: Given our growth portfolio, actually our capacity portfolio, we don’t have a lot of other opportunities. We have to make a couple of really big bets. The bet we’ve made in Fort Lauderdale is a pretty big bet, and we have more stuff to come after what we’ve announced recently. From that perspective, I think what you see is what you get. If you go back to JetBlue Airways, we’ve done some pretty dramatic adjustments to the network. We basically canceled and redeployed 20%, a little more than 20% of the network in 2024, and that’s now still playing out in 2025. We’re still in a period of some pretty significant change. I think we have gotten to the new normal in general. I’d say what we have done to the transatlantic has been absolutely outstanding.

We continue to do very, very well in the summer and even in the fourth quarter in the Atlantic, and that capacity is very nicely redeployed into mostly Florida West Coast, a little bit of ski markets and Bozeman and things like that in the winter. That balance of good sun markets in the winter and then European markets in the summer and fall has made for a very, very good profit portfolio for us. We’re very, very bullish about how the Atlantic has done and how it has let us sort of swap capacity back and forth. I think it’s actually one of the major benefits of our Atlantic strategy being focused on narrowbodies.

If we were to be flying wide bodies, and there are wide bodies out there that have lower capital costs than an A321LR, but if we were to do that, it would be much tougher to do that swap winter to summer than we are doing historically. I think it’s also worth noting that we only have two more airplanes coming that are transatlantic capable until 2031, I think. We’re just about reaching the first plateau of transatlantic growth.

Unidentified speaker: Understood. No more new destinations and kind of potentially moving capacity around? Do you think we’ll just wait and see?

Unidentified speaker: Wait, I did not say no more.

Unidentified speaker: I did not say no.

Unidentified speaker: You’re playing your cards.

Unidentified speaker: Never say no to your ships, sir.

Unidentified speaker: I just know any time I give any telegraphing of what we’re going to do, one of our competitors is doing it before us. It is better to be quiet.

Unidentified speaker: Understood. We had Delta this morning point to weakness in the back of the bus in transatlantic as well. Just given, I don’t know, have you done any work on what your customer profile transatlantic is relative to a mainland carrier? Are you more, is there more overlap between who flies JetBlue versus who flies maybe in the back of the bus at Delta? How is that macro looking right now?

Unidentified speaker: On a macro level, I’ll start by saying we are flying the transatlantic with narrowbodies. These are 130 to 150-seat airplanes. We are in a much better position to have to worry about filling all the seats versus a 350-seat airplane. I’m very happy with the fleet decision that we made, number one. Number two, if you look at the profile of the airplane, the back of the plane looks very similar to the back of the plane on legacy airlines. I think the front of the plane looks different. I think we’re much more focused on premium leisure than we see the corporate business travel, which to a certain extent, I think, is an opportunity because that is not what we see on transcontinental Mint. Boston West Coast, New York West Coast, we have a very good corporate business there.

Slowly but surely, I’d like to get more of them on our Atlantic. One of the things that we struggle with is we are very, very slot limited as far as our frequencies, specifically in London, both New York and in Boston, as far as our time of day and our coverage during the day. I would love to be able to have more slots there. At Heathrow, unfortunately, that’s not worked out like we’d like it to. Even with that, I think we do very well on the premium leisure front and are certainly very profitable.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. What does it take to crack into transatlantic corporate? Is it distribution or is it slots?

Unidentified speaker: I think the slots will help a lot. I think right now, one of Boston leaves at 8:30 A.M. The flight out of Boston leaves at 6:00 P.M., gets in at 5:50, something like that. It’s not the preferred business times to fly. Slowly but surely, we will do what we can to try to get more slot access into the airport.

Unidentified speaker: Understood. Maybe last question here, we are seeing people like Alaska start to do long-haul international as well. We had Southwest this morning say that’s on their radar. Is there room to have multiple non-legacy carriers do this?

Unidentified speaker: I’m happy to have a small airplane. I really don’t worry about what they’re going to do. I was very surprised by the decision to upgrade Alaska’s order from Dash 9 to Dash 10s before they took their first flight. I’d say in my previous airline, I’m a massive fan of the 787. I think it’s an absolute game-changer airplane. 400 seats in the winter, that’s a challenge for anybody. God bless them.

Unidentified speaker: Understood. Maybe we’ll switch gears here and talk about some of the idiosyncratic initiatives. Obviously, great progress with JetBlue and kind of what you’ve done so far. Maybe kind of a little bit of a report card, what’s been easier than expected, what’s been harder than expected?

Ursula Hurley, CFO, JetBlue Airways: Yeah, great question. I think what I’m most proud of in terms of the team’s execution is the improvements in the operation. We really struggled with that. You know, when you look back two years ago, being on the bottom of the Wall Street Journal, and we’ve made very strategic, thoughtful investments, whether that be in tools or technology or just the way we make decisions and actually fundamentally like how we plan the airline. That continues to pay dividends. As a result, our cost performance has been exceptional. That’s a testament to running a good operation, right? Because you’re avoiding customer disruption costs as well as labor premiums. Despite us pulling down capacity by 1.5 points in the troughs this year, we’re still maintaining the unit cost guide that we gave back in January.

That just speaks to the magnitude that the operation is positively impacting the financial results, but also the team’s execution on the 100-plus cost initiatives across the board. I would say what we’re most excited about is definitely continuing to lean into the premium sector, right, and rolling out Domestic First Class next year, but also rolling out the Blue Sky partnership with United Airlines. Those are both two very impactful and material initiatives that heavily are going to contribute to EBIT in the years to come. We are heads down focused on execution of both of those initiatives. I feel really good about the progress, and we’re hitting the timelines we committed to.

Unidentified speaker: I also want to say that the operational improvement has had one fantastic benefit, which was customer satisfaction. We are now back again at the top of the industry on Net Promoter Score. We owe a great debt of gratitude to our frontline crew members who are delivering a great service. The decision to make the changes we made in the operation were difficult. I’ve used this phrase before. It’s like jumping between two moving trains. We’ve had a model from the very beginning of JetBlue Airways of high utilization, lower costs, and basically be willing to run really late and fly the wings off the airplanes. It wasn’t working for our customers fundamentally. We made a very difficult decision to reduce utilization, take more risk on cost, and put more pressure on the team for execution. We did it.

We came off the bottom of the Wall Street Journal rankings for best airline. Hopefully, we’ll move up even more if we get lucky for the rest of the year and continue to execute. Ultimately, when we get the customer feedback of best NPS again, I know in reality it’s a pack of three of us at the top. It’s multiple airlines at the top. We’ve not been at the top for a few years. We’re actually really excited about that. We won a couple of J.D. Power Awards. It’s like the quality that JetBlue Airways has been known for for years, I think it’s a lot more tied to the brand than it has been for the last couple.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. It’s great to see that recovery there. Maybe let’s talk about Blue Sky for a few minutes. Can you just talk about how that is different versus the Northeast Alliance, not just in terms of structure and regulatory, but also in terms of revenue and kind of what you choose to get out of it? Obviously, you raised your contribution in JetBlue from that program. Kind of what was the incremental benefit?

Unidentified speaker: I’d say a couple of things. First of all, I was not at JetBlue Airways for the Northeast Alliance (NEA). I was a fan of the program. I thought it was a good plan. I think it helped problems that both American Airlines and JetBlue Airways had in the Northeast. It was very complementary. Unfortunately, the judge disagreed. I think there were a lot of learnings from the program. I think the things that were most problematic legally for the NEA were the revenue sharing relationship and a belief, again, I wasn’t here for it, I can’t speak to it, a belief that there was a level of coordination that was happening, which I don’t know if that’s true or not.

If you look at the JetBlue Airways and United Airlines relationship, as we’re calling it, now calling it Blue Sky, it actually does not include either of those really big elements. It does not include revenue sharing and does not include any sort of coordination. If you look at the ruling that Judge Young wrote in turning down the NEA, that was basically the roadmap for us writing what Blue Sky would look like. One of the things we recognize is that JetBlue Airways struggles in the battle against the legacies, in that we have a loyalty program that doesn’t really give you the full utility that you could get by aligning yourself with one of the big three programs. We have some loyalty partners.

The metaphor I use all the time is if you’re a college kid who’s moving from, you know, you pick a school, you’re moving from the University of Arizona, you’re moving to Boston, your first job, you’re moving to New York, and you’ve got to decide whether you want to take a JetBlue Airways credit card or a Delta credit card, it’s a tough decision because the Delta points, you know, although they’re devalued, so they’re not worth as much, as we hear from customers constantly, you can fly anywhere in the world. That’s not true of the JetBlue Airways program. Your points are worth more, but a lot of places we can’t take you. I think the relationship with United Airlines really creates the best of all worlds, which is we continue to maintain our program, our credit card relationship with Barclays, which is fantastic.

We can offer our customers access to the entire world. We’re very, very excited about it. We learned a lot from the NEA. There were some pieces of that that were really good we wanted to make sure we duplicated.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. What are any potential opportunities on timeline here? Obviously, it’s going to take a while to put this in place. I know you said full benefits in 2028. Any opportunities to pull that forward?

Unidentified speaker: Let’s talk about the critical path. The number one critical path was with DOJ. I’m not going to lie, it was a difficult process with them. They asked some very, very aggressive questions. They clearly wanted to make sure that this checked all the boxes from a legal perspective. There were some modifications made to the original agreement based on their feedback. We have great respect for the DOJ. We want to keep them happy. We first had to get through that. That was resolved a couple of weeks ago. At that point, we took all the paper plans and started actually spending money and implementing. The biggest critical path items now are really IT-related. We actually have some experience doing programs like this. The pieces of this were actually in a better spot than United is.

Between the two of us, I think we’re hoping that we will have some customer benefits by the end of 2025. It all depends on how quickly we can implement the IT front. One of the other areas where we are very excited is the Paisly relationship. We’ve talked a little bit about Paisly publicly. We gave, I think, in 2023, we gave one number for Paisly EBIT. We believe, and I think it’s proven out to be true, we believe we are the best in the world at ancillary products. Honestly, I did not believe that when I got here. As we’ve done some surveying of competitors and seen what others have said publicly, we think we’re extremely good at this.

When we were meeting with all the partners we talked to, and it was multiple airlines before we settled on United, we said, we think this offers an opportunity for us to take over your ancillary products. All the airlines I think were interested. United looked at it and compared the results that we have produced, again, public data, results that we have produced versus what they were doing. They recognize that this actually could be a great creative opportunity for both of us. I’m really bullish about Paisly. Right now, we’re working through mostly the notice period for the current relationships United has. I’m really bullish that we can do better in Paisly than was originally forecasted.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. What is the future of Paisly? Is this potentially a standalone business that gets spun off at some point, or?

Unidentified speaker: Honestly, I like the EBIT right now. My number one goal is to improve earnings, get back to positive free cash flow, start paying down the debt. The Paisly results, you know, I guess we haven’t really reported some of the internal.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah, more regular disclosure, maybe.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah, we haven’t really disclosed a ton about it other than the EBIT number we did in 2023. I am extremely excited about Paisly. We are talking to other airlines besides United. I think there are almost 10 airlines right now on the charts, at least airlines we have talked to and given presentations to. I think the biggest challenge we’re going to have is bandwidth as far as implementation. What we love about Paisly is that it is very high margin and extremely low capital. Right now, that’s a lot better business than the airline business, sadly. From that perspective, given where we stand as far as free cash flow, the thought of a great EBIT business with low capital needs makes us all very, very excited.

Unidentified speaker: Understood. Any questions from the audience?

Ursula Hurley, CFO, JetBlue Airways: Yes. Can you just talk about the competitive environment you’re seeing in the Fort Lauderdale market, and maybe what will draw customers to book on JetBlue rather than maybe some of your other peers’ things?

Unidentified speaker: I mean, we are the second biggest airline in Fort Lauderdale. We’ve been the biggest in the past. We’ve got a really good franchise there already. With respect to the competitive environment, I think if you look at the public data about our performance in Fort Lauderdale versus our biggest competitor, which is Spirit, we’ve outperformed them pretty handily for a long time. The biggest impediment we’ve had to growth has been gate access, especially for international flying, because we really want to add some more international flying. The beauty of South Florida is, and as someone who lived in Latin America for four years, it is the capital of Latin America. There are a lot of places south of Fort Lauderdale that we’d like to fly. You note in the announcement that’s in the deck that you got today, we’ve added multiple cities south.

There’ll be more to come, hopefully, as soon as we get gate access. From a competitive perspective, I think we’re very optimistic. I think the ULCCs in general have struggled when you look at the pricing environment they’re in right now and the value proposition that they offer. JetBlue is extremely well positioned and has a long history of strong performance. We most recently had a pretty significant competitive incursion at San Juan from a ULCC. They’ve pulled almost half their growth’s been pulled already because we compete extremely well against them.

Unidentified speaker: Understood. Any other questions?

Ursula Hurley, CFO, JetBlue Airways: I know you guys talked about rolling out Domestic First Class in 2026. Just wondering what markets you guys are thinking about prioritizing with this product.

Unidentified speaker: That’s a great question. It’s really funny because as we’ve talked to our customers as far as where they have interest in Domestic First Class, it really is everywhere. It’s been shocking. I don’t think we’re ready to say exactly which markets, but I think we know where we want to put the planes first that we think has the biggest upside. Frankly, I think connecting to the transatlantic is going to be very helpful because as we look at the price environment, in general, in the U.S., the prices to the gateways, sort of New York, Boston, Washington, tend to be probably New York and Boston more than Washington. Certainly, New York and Boston, the prices to the gateways tend to be lower. The prices of the interior tend to be really high, if you’re connecting through to Buffalo or Detroit or places like that.

The ability to offer a first-class product in conjunction with a transatlantic business class and offer that product all the way, we think is going to be very rich and creative. I would love to get more Atlantic connectivity as quick as I can. Just as a reminder, Domestic First Class should show up late second, early third quarter of 2026.

Unidentified speaker: It’s not the clarity on GTF that was lifted a huge overhang for you guys. Do you feel like that’s kind of locked and in the bag? What does that give you in terms of optionality for future scheduling?

Ursula Hurley, CFO, JetBlue Airways: Yeah, really good question. The GTF has probably been our biggest impediment over the last few years. We have not been able to grow. When we entered 2025, we initially thought we were going to have mid to high teens number of aircraft on the ground. That has materially improved. We’re actually going to average less than 10 throughout 2025. 2025 is actually going to be the peak AOGs that we have on the ground. That will step change down as we enter 2026, and we’ll be fully resolved by the end of 2027. Next year, we’ll actually be able to grow again. We’re pretty excited about that. That will be very beneficial from a unit cost efficiency perspective. The contributors to the improvement of the GTF have been we’ve induced a significant amount of self-help. We are about three to four times overspared.

We have sourced those engines on our own. Pratt & Whitney is seeing improvement in their supply chain and a slight improvement in their turnaround times. We’ve also seen engines staying on wing longer. Some of the interval extensions have occurred. All in all, super pleased with the level of improvement. It definitely sets us up on a path to be growing again, which we’re extremely pleased with.

Unidentified speaker: JetBlue takes you out of 2028. There is probably not much in terms of cash return or anything else until that point. How do you think of the balance sheet between now and then, managing liquidity and the options ahead of you until you get to that point?

Ursula Hurley, CFO, JetBlue Airways: Yeah, JetBlue Airways is obviously a multi-year program. We executed an aircraft deferral last year to ensure that we have a runway to deliver free cash flow at the culmination of JetBlue Airways in 2027. We’re definitely on a path to number one goal is positive operating margin. Number two is positive free cash flow. Number three is going to be delivering the balance sheet. Definitely a multi-year journey. We just kicked off our 2026 planning process, and our aspiration is to hopefully build a plan that gets us at least to break even. That’s the aspiration. We need the macro backdrop to be constructive and the setup to be able to help us deliver that. Again, I’m extremely pleased with the team’s execution of the JetBlue Airways initiative and excited about the opportunity in front of us as we navigate into 2026.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. We haven’t had much chance to talk about this. I’ll maybe ask you about this. Just the regulatory environment in the U.S. right now, kind of when you think about the initiatives to finally modernize ATC, which looks like it’s kind of concrete actions taking place there. I think there was a ruling, was it last week, about some of the fees kind of being reversed from the previous administration era. What does that mean to you guys? It feels like given your Northeast exposure, like you might be one of the biggest beneficiaries of ATC capacity improving and potentially kind of these features as well. How do you think about that being almost a back pocket driver for us?

Unidentified speaker: There is no question that in this market, nobody benefits more from air traffic control reform than we do. To be honest, the government, the new Administrator, the Secretary of Transportation, everyone is saying the right things. I’m feeling very optimistic that we may finally see some movement on air traffic control reform. Money is being allocated. This seems to be a design philosophy. We’re actually very bullish about this. It will also take many, many years. We are not counting on this as being any part of our strategy.

Unidentified speaker: Not 10 years, it’s more.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah, it’s going to be 5 to 10, I think, for this to really come through. I’m very bullish about it. With respect to the regulatory changes, I think we were hurt actually on a relative basis from the regulatory changes more than others because the customer care side of managing disruptions, we’ve always been more liberal than our competitors. We offered a better value proposition than they did, and then all of a sudden, it’s regulated that everyone has to go up more towards JetBlue’s level. It’s like one of my distinctions goes away. From that perspective, I think it’s good for this to change. I will say also the previous administration, it was a very unusual and somewhat unevenly distributed level of focus on what was important and what was not important.

Again, being based in the Northeast, we’ve spent a lot of time dealing with disruptions, and we know the levers. I think the regulatory environment was not a great one before. Knock on wood, I think we’re feeling very good about the situation we’re in right now.

Unidentified speaker: Understood. Maybe just to basically wrap up, obviously lots going on. In terms of the clear catalysts, how much are you guys focused on JetBlue initiatives versus dealing with everything else out there in the macro?

Unidentified speaker: I mean, listen, underneath, we still are focused on the mission and values of the company. You know, bringing humanity back to air travel, our five values, nothing changes that. JetBlue Airways is going to be an important, important tool to get us back to financial performance. We recognize that it’s a slower process than we would like and that investors would like. Frankly, every single one of those initiatives has real money tied to it, and we’re very happy with how we’re executing to this so far. It is clear that JetBlue Airways is the recipe to go forward for us. That being the case, I think we all recognize that this is JetBlue one. We’re going to have JetBlue two, JetBlue three. It’s not the old line that says a marathon, not a sprint. It’s not a sprint. It’s not a marathon. It’s a marathon that never ends.

We’re clearly not going to rest on this, and we’ll continue to look for the next level of initiatives that are going to bring our owners the return they expect.

Unidentified speaker: Very good. Marty, thanks so much for being here.

Unidentified speaker: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Ursula Hurley, CFO, JetBlue Airways: Thanks so much, Marty.

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