JetBlue: After Gutting Los Angeles, More Cuts Are Coming
JetBlue is eliminating a third of its Los Angeles flying, dropping four cities completely from its route networks, and pulling down other flights including several out of Fort Lauderdale. But it turns out they aren’t done cutting – and more route cuts will come next month.
The airline is telling employees that they simply have a backlog of changes to make, because of their earlier focus on the Spirit Airlines acquisition and American Airlines alliance that was quashed by the Justice Department over anti-trust.
- They had a partnership with American Airlines approved by the Department of Transportation. A new Biden administration decided to change course and fought successfully to end that deal.
- Their American partnership meant they needed to grow to take advantage of new opportunities. They were buying planes and pilots in Spirit Airlines. They lost that deal, too.
- The Biden administration was afraid there’d be less competition with those deals. It turns out there’s less competition without them, as JetBlue can no longer be in growth mode.
The airline’s stock is down. Carl Icahn bought 10%, got two board seats, and is circling. JetBlue needs to turn around its finances fast – they are raising fees and eliminating unprofitably flying they’d hope to grow to be successful. That’s short-term thinking to get the stock up in the face of a corporate raider.
Aviation watchdog JonNYC reports that another round of JetBlue route cuts will come next month, focused on winter flying:
…this round was focused mainly on summer flying. Another round of cuts targeting winter is expected to be announced in the ‘latter half of April.'”
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) March 20, 2024
In this town-hall, the collapse of Spirt deal/NEA is mentioned as to why there is a “backlog” of needed cuts at B6.
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) March 20, 2024
here’s a very rough transcript: pic.twitter.com/DxGzxZQ7Xl
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) March 20, 2024
The federal government claimed that JetBlue was a disruptor, and that would be lost if they partnered with American. Then they claimed Spirit was the disruptor, that would be lost if acquired by JetBlue. Spirit is struggling on its own. JetBlue is no longer able to disrupt. And the big winners are big players, Delta and United.