There’s been a lot of talk about JetBlue lately with rumors swirling about imminent trouble for the airline. The thing is, it all seems made up. Yes, it has a longer term debt problem and a (lack of) profit problem — we talk about that at great length this week on The Air Show podcast. But in this post I want to focus on the revenue picture. It’s actually looking quite good.
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Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts JetBlue’s troubles have been brewing for years. Come listen as Jon Ostrower and I sit down tracing this back to before the pandemic on what has gone wrong. But also… why this current panic is overblown. |
JetBlue has always had its roots in being a more premium version of what other airlines were offering. The thing is, it was a premium version of coach, and it never quite built out its portfolio to take advantage of all that growth in higher level premium demand. In other words, while JetBlue was good at acting premium, it could never actually profit off it the ways others have.
This goes all the way back to the beginning of the airline when founder David Neeleman was focused on a great experience for all. I’ll bring my old chart back showing the evolution of the A320 configuration:
Soon after launching, David decided to take 12 seats off the airplane. The result was an incredible amount of legroom for everyone and no actual upsell capability for people who wanted a better experience versus those who just wanted a cheap fare. Maybe it wasn’t so obvious at the time, but you’d think after American’s More Room Throughout Coach flamed out, JetBlue would have started to pick up on this.
Over time, JetBlue did create Even More Legroom, which became Even More Space, but these were just simple opportunities to pay for a better seat assignment. It wasn’t a bundled option for an overall better product that could have demanded a higher price. Now, JetBlue finally has morphed this into EvenMore, which is that better product all around. Of course there’s the excellent Mint experience, but now there will also be BlueFirst coming to the whole domestic fleet. The upsell engine is just getting started over there.
The network has improved dramatically as well. It was not focused enough on profit previously when the money-losing LA/Long Beach focus city existed. Capacity was moved out of Boston to fund adventures in places like San Francisco or Raleigh/Durham or Miami, none of which really turned into anything. But that leading position in Boston turned into a second-place position as Delta took advantage, especially during the Northeast Alliance period with American where it had to redirect planes to fly all of those LaGuardia slots from American.
The new team under CEO Joanna Geraghty, President Marty St George, and SVP Revenue, Network, and Enterprise Planning Daniel Shurz has been trying to fix all of this. And they are starting to make real inroads.
The network as of late has focused mostly on Fort Lauderdale since Spirit’s demise created an opportunity. But beyond that, Boston, JFK, Orlando, and San Juan are the places that will get attention. JetBlue is trying to be a premium leisure airline, and the network decisions show that. It’s not just network, of course. We’ve already talked about product, and the United Blue Sky partnership has been a big win. Revamped credit card offerings have certainly helped as well.
The passenger revenue numbers from Q3 were impressive. Take a look for yourself.
Q3 2026 PRASM vs Q3 2025 by Airline
*Frontier does not report PRASM; calculated from filed passenger revenue and ASMs, Data via airline SEC Filings
Don’t focus on the aggregate passenger revenue per available seat mile (PRASM). These aren’t adjusted for stage length, nor do these airlines all have the same models. Focus instead on the percent change year-over-year and what do you see?
Yes, Frontier is at the top with a truly impressive revenue performance in Q3. It had a great quarter, though really it is easier to have a higher percentage change when you start with a low base. Still, this performance bounce is largely due to the demise of Spirit. In second place is Southwest. As we all know by now, Southwest has completely changed its model. Seat assignments, extra legroom, checked bag fees. Yes, this revenue performance is impressive, and it should be. And that brings us to number three, JetBlue, with a nearly 20 percent increase.
Sure, JetBlue benefits from Spirit’s demise as well, but we have to remember that it also poured capacity into Fort Lauderdale to try to backfill and dominate. Overall, despite Spirit’s failure, Q3 seats for FLL in total were down only 2.3 percent year-over-year. And focusing in on the markets that JetBlue served in Q3 2026 from FLL, seats are UP nearly 3 percent year-over-year. That is usually bad for short term unit revenues when you have such a massive increase in capacity at your own airline that leads to higher industry capacity in those markets, but in this case it worked.
I’ll let this slide from JetBlue’s earnings presentation tell the story.
A 65 percent increase in capacity accompanied by a 15 percent increase in unit revenue? That is just excellent work. Yes, Spirit going away is a big driver, but it’s not easy replacing all that lost low fare capacity with seats that need to generate much higher fares. (Actually, Spirit needed to get higher fares too… hence, why it’s now gone.) JetBlue has managed it well.
And the airline’s forecast for the broader network in Q4 is for unit revenue to be up 18 to 22 percent. The train keeps on rolling… for now.
With such a rosy revenue picture, why is everyone still freaking out about this airline? Again, high fuel prices, large debt… it makes it tougher to dig out of the hole that was dug by the previous regime. And throw in uncertainty about future fuel inputs since that is truly an unknown considering how this Iranian war is going (or not going).
We talk more about this on The Air Show this week, but suffice it to say that whatever issues the airline has, revenue is not currently one of them. And the panic about the airline’s demise is certainly overblown.
