JetBlue, beloved for its snacks and Wi-Fi, tries fixing its flying

JetBlue Airways Chief Executive Robin Hayes pulled up a flight-tracking app on his smartphone and ticked off real-time flight-delay stats for his and other airlines.

JetBlue had the lowest rate of delayed flights of any major U.S. airline on this mid-January weekday. On-time arrivals were running around 94% for the day, two points shy of the airline’s all-time record, airline President Joanna Geraghty boasted.

The executives can be forgiven for celebrating a smooth day, given the bumps JetBlue and its passengers have endured in the past two years. The airline posted the worst or next-to-worst performance among major U.S. airlines in key reliability metrics including cancellations and delays in 2022, landing at the bottom of The Wall Street Journal’s airline scorecard for the second year in a row.

JetBlue has put lots of resources into improving its systems, but the operational challenges remain at the same time it is trying to convince regulators that travelers will benefit if it buys budget airline Spirit Airlines, itself no stranger to operational issues. 

HOW THE JETBLUE, SPIRIT MERGER WILL IMPACT FLIERS

Blame It on New York 

JetBlue, which caters to vacationers and routinely earns customer raves for its in-flight perks, says it will never win medals for punctuality due to its concentration of routes in the New York City area, home to some of the country’s most congested runways and airspace. Three out of four of JetBlue’s flights operate in congested airspace, the airline says, with no other airline close to that figure.

The airline blames the bulk of last year’s flight woes on a rough first half as it coped with absences due to the Omicron variant of Covid-19 and the industry’s rocky ramp-up to meet soaring travel demand as the pandemic eased.

Ms. Geraghty gives JetBlue a ‘B’ grade for its operations, saying employees "execute extremely well in the face of the most difficult operating environment in the United States." 

The airline had two flight cancellations during the Thanksgiving rush and had the lowest cancellation rate of any major airline except American Airlines during the Christmas storms, according to aviation data firm Anuvu. Even United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby praised JetBlue’s performance on his airline’s recent earnings call. (JetBlue and United share congestion challenges given United’s hub in Newark, N.J.)

"Of course we want to be better. We’re investing," Mr. Hayes, the CEO, says. "But you have to reverse out the effects of geography to do a true comparison."

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JetBlue says it has spent millions to reduce costly delays and cancellations and has hired veteran executives from American and Delta Air Lines to aid in the effort. 

It has fine-tuned and buffered its schedule during traditionally busy times and has increased the percentage of flights that start and end the day in New York or Boston with the same crew to reduce the chance of staffing woes when flight troubles arise.

The airline has beefed up its pilot reserves, spending more than $100 million, according to Mr. Hayes, so it can send an extra crew on delayed flights on short notice when pilots are in danger of running out of allowable work hours for the day. That way a flight from, say, New York City to the Caribbean can return to New York as scheduled instead of being canceled.

A Delay Strategy

When poor weather, air-traffic control issues and other issues arise, JetBlue says it opts for long delays over cancellations because it flies to most vacation destinations infrequently.

"If you’ve got a one-a-day [flight] to Aruba, I know I cannot accommodate those people for two or three days so I’m going to do my best to get them there even if it means I’m going to get them there late," Ms. Geraghty says.

Ms. Geraghty says the merger with Spirit will smooth operations by diversifying its flight network outside the "chaos" in New York. Spirit’s exposure to congested airspace is just one in four flights, she says. The airline would also be able to rebook passengers through other cities where Spirit has flights when troubles arise.

Ms. Geraghty says software upgrades JetBlue developed during the pandemic have been invaluable when cancellations are needed. The system quickly produces new flight and crew schedules when things go awry, no matter the scale. The airline can give priority to one or more things in the process, including passenger reaccommodation options and revenue. 

Southwest Airlines had to do some of those things manually, exacerbating its recovery from the Christmas storms and leading to an unprecedented meltdown. The airline was forced to cancel thousands of daily flights to reset the operation.

Snacks and Wi-Fi

Eno Apkan, a 30-year-old software engineer who splits her time between Boston and Miami, said she was surprised that JetBlue ranked below Frontier and merger partner Spirit. She flies JetBlue and partner American frequently and prefers almost everything about JetBlue, down to the Goodie Girl brown-sugar cookies and free Wi-Fi. 

"Who wants pretzels or almonds? There’s nothing sexy about that," Ms. Apkan says.

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John Sackton, a seafood industry consultant based in Massachusetts, calls himself a JetBlue fan but was upset when the airline canceled his recent San Diego-to-Boston flight, offering to bus him and other passengers two hours to Los Angeles to catch another flight to Boston.

Mr. Sackton says he found that solution "ridiculous," and opted to buy a ticket to Boston on Alaska Airlines the next day, paying $200 for a hotel for the night. JetBlue apologized to passengers for the disruption and said it would have preferred to offer customers a flight from San Diego instead of Los Angeles.

The issue hasn’t soured him on JetBlue, he says, mostly because he thinks the whole industry is a mess. "Traveling these days is a crapshoot."