With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Industries included in the sector are airlines, transportation equipment, logistics, mail and freight delivery, railroads, shipping, and trucking.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Transportation

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

Here’s our look at 50 companies that do well by doing good.

Change the World

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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U.S. airline JetBlue, which began service in 2000, flies to 100 destinations with 22,000 crew members as of 2025. Known for its East Coast network, especially for leisure travel, JetBlue was an early pioneer of customer experience, including seatback entertainment. After a terminated deal to acquire Spirit Airlines in 2024, JetBlue has sought other paths forward, including a partnership with United Airlines, announced in May 2025, that allows customers to link loyalty programs between the two airlines.

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JetBlue Airways (JBLU): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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JetBlue Airways

jetblue airways

Good morning. My name is Krista, and I would like to welcome everyone to the JetBlue Airways Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. I would now like to turn the call over to JetBlue's Director of Investor Relations, Koosh Patel. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Krista. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us for our first quarter 2026 earnings call. This morning, we issued our earnings release and a presentation that we will reference during this call. All of those documents are available on our website at investor.jetblue.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. In New York to discuss our results are Joanna Geraghty, our Chief Executive Officer, Marty St. George, our President, and Ursula Hurley, our Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements about our outlook, strategy, and future performance. These statements are based on our current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings for information about our factors that cause those differences. We may also discuss certain non-GAAP measures.

Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings materials and on our website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Joanna Geraghty, JetBlue's CEO.

Thank you, Koosh. Good morning, and thank you for joining JetBlue's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I want to begin by thanking our crew members for their continued dedication during what has been another challenging start to the year. I also want to recognize the TSA agents for their commitment during this shutdown. This first quarter included multiple winter storms and TSA disruptions, but through it all, we are grateful our teams remained focused on delivering a safe and reliable service for our customers. The conflict in the Middle East and its impact on fuel prices is the most significant headwind we face as an industry since COVID. Given the sharp increase in the price of fuel and the expectation for elevated prices throughout this year, we are suspending our prior full-year guidance as we aggressively adjust to the evolving macro backdrop.

I want to be clear, suspending our full-year guidance reflects external factors alone and not a change in the strong progress of JetForward. We have taken immediate action to offset fuel costs with our ultimate focus on minimizing the financial impact and preserving our liquidity position. The three primary levers available to us are adjusting fares to better align with input costs, moderating unproductive capacity, and pursuing additional cost savings opportunities. We recognize that customers expect strong value from JetBlue, and we're continuing to carefully balance our path to restoring profitability with meeting those expectations. Importantly, demand remains strong. This backdrop allows us to recover some of the increase in fuel costs, and as such, we've adjusted fares along with the industry over the last two months. Bookings have remained resilient amidst these changes, which is an encouraging sign.

However, the first quarter was already over 90% booked before fuel prices suddenly spiked, reducing the opportunity to immediately recapture the impact of this significant fuel increase. We expect 30%-40% fuel recapture in the second quarter and plan to achieve 100% recapture by early 2027. Given the broader cost environment, we've also made targeted updates to ancillary fees, such as checked bags. This allows us to better cover costs while keeping our base fares competitive. We will continue looking for additional ways to strengthen revenue performance throughout the rest of the year. At the same time, we are aggressively reducing capacity, targeting adjustments in off-peak and shoulder periods. We've acted quickly, reducing capacity by nearly one point versus close-in expectations in the second quarter, with plans to reduce the second half by at least two to three points.

While we are able to reduce capacity closer in, as we've done, these decisions are more beneficial when made at least 60 days in advance to take even greater advantage of cost savings opportunities. With demand continuing to remain strong, it's important we take a flexible approach to trimming capacity as we head into the peak summer season. We plan to closely monitor market conditions and expect to reduce additional capacity after the summer peak, assuming fuel prices remain elevated. In addition to managing capacity, we have opportunities to reduce other expenses and better align our cost profile with capacity. This includes efforts to reduce controllable spending and hiring. In a lower capacity environment, we also expect savings on maintenance and other variable costs, such as landing fees.

As we meaningfully adjust capacity to address higher fuel, we are committed to pulling all levers available to mitigate potential upward pressure on unit costs. Alongside these efforts, we believe JetForward remains the right strategy to navigate us forward. Across each of our priority moves, reliable and caring service, best East Coast leader networks, products and perks customers value, and a secure financial future, we are seeing clear evidence that our strategy is working, and we remain on track to drive $310 million of incremental JetForward EBIT in 2026 and $850 million-$950 million in 2027.

As a reminder, we have transformational initiatives launching this year, including domestic first class, the continued implementation of our Blue Sky collaboration, and our second BlueHouse, which are expected to drive significant value for years to come. In closing, demand remains intact. Our JetForward initiatives are performing, and we are actively managing levers within our control. I remain confident we have the right strategy and the right team to navigate yet another challenging year for the sector, even in the face of these macro factors. As we gain greater visibility into fuel and its impact on the macro environment, we will plan to provide an updated view on full-year expectations. I'll now turn it over to Marty.

Thank you, Joanna, and thanks again to our crew members. We delivered strong RAS performance, a positive 6.5% in the first quarter, in line with our revised guidance and exceeding the midpoint of our initial RASM range by 4.5 points. The Caribbean airspace closure in January and winter storms Fern and Hernando combined to reduce capacity by nearly four points, which benefited our RASM performance by two points. The remaining 2.5 points of our RASM beat is a reflection of demand strength and the effectiveness of our JetForward initiatives. Demand trends strengthened as the quarter progressed, Importantly, that momentum is carried into the second quarter. We saw strength across the booking curve, both close in demand and further out, with improvements in both peak and trough periods.

Premium continued to outperform core, with year-over-year premium RASM better than core by 9 points in the first quarter. We are encouraged by improvements in core demand in RASM, which is now strongly positive year-over-year, reflecting a more balanced demand environment across our offerings relative to what we experienced last year. Delivering the differentiated JetBlue experience across each unique customer offering meant even more in core remains a priority, reinforcing our commitment to all customers, not just select segments, even as fuel costs remain elevated. Lastly, while we saw strength in both domestic and international bookings, domestic has recovered meaningfully, and year-over-year RASM outperformed international. First quarter RASM was also benefited by about 1.5 points from a shift of up bunch Easter traffic into late March. This was a historic quarter for our loyalty program, highlighting the investments we've made in our product and operation.

Loyalty cash remuneration grew 19% year over year, driven by double-digit growth in spend on the JetBlue cards. In addition to record levels of spend and a 45% increase in card acquisitions, we achieved all-time highs for TrueBlue active members and attach rates. Blue Sky is also driving corporate sign-ups in our non-focus city geographies, reflecting the broader reach the collaboration brings to our loyalty program. We continue to add utility and value for our members in other ways this quarter, including the ability to use points for ancillary purchases, which is off to a very strong start. We also launched Family Tiles, an industry first that allows parents to earn status faster when traveling with their children. Finally, customers are responding exceptionally well to our BlueHouse at JFK, with NPS trending well above expectations and driving premium credit card sign-ups beyond our initial targets.

We believe the opening of our next launch in Boston later this summer will be a further catalyst for premium growth alongside the launch of domestic first class expected in the second half. As these products and perks ramp and both new and existing members deepen their loyalty engagement, we expect meaningful sequential growth in loyalty revenue throughout the year. Strong customer response to our strategic growth in Fort Lauderdale drove first quarter RASM growth of 5%, even with capacity growth of 23%. In late March, we announced another round of additional service from Fort Lauderdale, one new destination to Cleveland, and added frequencies on seven, excuse me, nine routes where customers want more choices where they fly.

With the addition of Cleveland, JetBlue will have launched nonstop service to 21 cities and increased frequency on over 20 high-demand markets from Fort Lauderdale over the past year, further strengthening our investment in building depth and connectivity in Florida's biggest premium market. Through our recent growth and competitive reductions, we've been able to take advantage of newly available gate space to build a schedule with four connecting banks beginning this summer, up from two banks previously. This provides our customers in the Northeast with significantly more opportunities to connect to our growing portfolio of destinations in the Caribbean and Latin America. We remain excited about the long-term opportunity in this focus city and continue to view it as an addition to key leisure destinations across the state of Florida as an essential component of our network strategy.

We've now grown to 11 destinations in Florida following the launch of service to Destin Fort Walton Beach from both New York and Boston in the first quarter. Blue Sky reached a new milestone in the first quarter with the launch of interline flight sales with United. We are encouraged by the early results we're already seeing and are excited by the new opportunities we expect this collaboration to bring to our customers. This quarter, reciprocal loyalty benefits across Mosaic and MileagePlus tiers are expected to turn on, in addition to sales of rental cars through our Paisly platform. For the second quarter, we expect continued strength in RASM, supported by sustained demand trends and progress from our JetForward initiatives. This quarter is anchored by peak periods in early April, late May, and late June.

The Easter outbound shift represents a second quarter headwind of about 1.5 points of RASM. As a result, we expect RASM to grow 7%-11% year-over-year on 1.5%-4.5% more capacity. Our investments in Fort Lauderdale now comprise all of our second-quarter capacity growth. We are taking a similar approach to guiding RASM as we have in the past and guiding to what we see today, which points to a sustained level of strong yields and loads for the remainder of the quarter. As we progress through the quarter, we plan to monitor the demand environment for opportunities to continue optimizing yields to help offset fuel costs. As of today, over two-thirds of the quarter's revenues are on the books.

As Joanna mentioned, our second quarter RASM guidance implies that we capture 30%-40% of the fuel cost increases versus our initial plan for the quarter. We are encouraged by the demand trends we're seeing and believe we are well-positioned to generate significant RASM growth this quarter as we head into the summer peak travel season. Now, I will turn it over to Ursula.

Thank you, Marty. As Joanna mentioned, the start to 2026 was marked by a dynamic operating environment and macro backdrop. The industry climate seems to be evolving every day, and we are responding quickly to position JetBlue to achieve our financial priorities. For example, we've actioned several capacity reductions across the second quarter and plan to stay nimble in the second half of the year. At the same time, we are prioritizing capacity investments in our Fort Lauderdale focus city, where customer response has been strong and the resulting RASM is performing extremely well. Our underlying business is clearly improving, with a roughly five point spread between RASM and CASM ex-fuel expected at the midpoint of our guidance ranges this quarter. We haven't seen a gap like this in years, and it reflects strong demand for our product, better cost discipline, and real momentum from our JetForward initiatives.

During the first quarter, CASM ex fuel growth finished up 6.6%, four points of which was due to close-in capacity reductions from the operational disruptions. Without these impacts, CASM ex would have finished up 2.5% or two points better than our initial midpoint. one point of this beat was due to cost-saving efforts, while one point of spend is expected to shift into the remainder of the year. For the second quarter, we expect CASM ex fuel to increase in the range of 3%-5% year-over-year. We continue to expect CASM ex fuel growth to moderate down during the second half of the year, with over two points less unit cost growth than the first half. This remains subject to how the price of fuel evolves in the coming months and our final capacity levels.

Average fuel price for the first quarter was $2.96, 26% higher than the midpoint of our initial guidance. We expect second quarter fuel price to be in the range of $4.13-$4.28, with the midpoint 75% higher year-over-year, which is derived from the forward Brent curve as of April 10th. As a reminder, every $0.10 increase or decrease in fuel price is the equivalent to about $85 million of expense for the full year. To help offset a portion of fuel costs, we continue to focus on our fuel efficiency programs, with 30% of our second quarter capacity powered by more fuel-efficient new engine technology, supporting a targeted 5% fuel efficiency improvement over the last three years.

With oil and crack spreads expected to remain elevated for a sustained period, we are actioning incremental cost reductions beyond capacity cuts to mitigate the impact. These include reducing spend across both OpEx and CapEx and slowing hiring in some work groups to better align with our capacity expectations. At the same time, we are executing on our structural cost initiatives under JetForward, including rolling out new technology and AI to support improved planning for our crew and operation, launching a sourcing center of excellence to further optimize contract spend with business partners, and implementing more efficient insourcing and outsourcing opportunities across the business. Taken together, we expect our near-term cost reduction efforts and our JetForward cost initiatives to support strong cost control this year.

While we did suspend our full-year CASM ex-fuel guidance, we expect its historical relationship to capacity to continue this year, which implies roughly flat CASM ex-fuel on mid- to high single-digit capacity growth. Turning to our fleet and capital expenditures. In the first quarter, capital expenditures totaled $141 million, $59 million lower than our initial guidance due to timing shift of deliveries. Looking ahead, we expect approximately $275 million of capital expenditures in the second quarter and approximately $800 million in 2026. There has been a slight shift to our A220 deliveries, we now expect 12 total aircraft deliveries this year, down from our January guidance of 14 aircraft. As previously discussed, we expect CapEx to remain below $1 billion annually through the end of the decade.

Shifting to our balance sheet, we believe our unencumbered asset base and liquidity help us successfully manage through industry shocks like these. I am pleased with the runway we've built for JetBlue. We raised over $3 billion back in 2024 to secure our financial future and give JetForward a runway to perform. The cash we have on hand as a result is a valuable cushion in this volatile high-fuel environment. We ended the quarter with $2.4 billion of liquidity or 26% of trailing twelve-month revenue, above our liquidity target of 17%-20%. This excludes our $600 million undrawn revolving credit facility. Earlier this month, we raised $500 million secured by aircraft collateral with an accordion feature that allows us to upsize to $750 million. We plan to reassess our funding needs as the year progresses.

We also recently repaid the remaining $325 million of our 2021 convertible notes. Lastly, following this month's capital raise, our unencumbered asset base remains over $6 billion, with approximately a quarter in tangible collateral. Our priority remains maintaining a strong liquidity position and ensuring JetForward has the runway to perform. To wrap up, the environment we are operating in is challenging and volatile. We are focused on taking swift action and executing on our JetForward strategy to put JetBlue in a position to restore operating profitability when the environment has normalized. We have taken meaningful action across the three main levers we control: fares, capacity, and costs. We are pleased with the early results of these actions.

We remain encouraged by the underlying performance of the business and are confident that JetForward is the right plan to navigate this challenging environment and deliver value for our shareholders. With that, we will now take your questions.

Thank you. Your first question comes from Michael Linenberg with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey, two questions here. With respect to your domestic first class, have you actually started selling that for the back part of the year? If you are, can you just give us a sense of what the initial uptake looks like?

Hi, thanks for the question, Mike. No, we have not begun selling it yet. We wanna wait till we understand fully the implementation timeline. As we said, it was gonna come in second half of 2026, and we're still on track for that to happen, but we will announce the over-for-sale date when we know the first plane's gonna be out there for sale.

We're currently going through the certification process.

Okay, great. Just my second question, probably to you, Joanna. There appears to be, like, a subset of the industry that, among other things, is requesting a suspension of the ticket tax. Given that that is a user fee to fund the system, could we be in a situation where half the industry is, I don't know, subsidizing the use of the system for the benefit of the other? Is something like that even possible? I'm just curious about your thoughts about that. Thanks for taking my question.

Yeah. Not entirely sure maybe the fuel exercise tax you're speaking about. Yeah, no, I mean, at the end of the day, if it were to apply to, you know, one carrier, it would presumably need to apply to everybody. The numbers associated with that, we looked at that early on, aren't significant. I mean, it's You know, every dollar counts. It ultimately was, you know, somewhere in the area of $20 million-$25 million annually for JetBlue.

I'll also put my own ad in there. The ticket tax is we as an industry view this as a very unfair tax because we way overpay versus private aviation. I would love for it to be reformed for other reasons, but I'm not sure this is a reason.

Your next question comes from the line of Conor Cunningham with Melius Research. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Thank you. I'm trying to understand the comment that you were 90% booked in 1Q when jet fuel started to move up and just what that means to sequentials. Again, I realize you expect 30%-40% recapture, but I would think that the fact that I think there's been, what, six industry fare increases, that the uplift in revenue would have been a little bit better in the 2Qs. If you could just talk about what's going on there on a sequential step-up. I realize the capacity is stepping up with it, but just any thoughts. Thank you.

Yeah, no, hey, Conor. Thanks. The comment was about right now, we're 90% booked for the second quarter. We've got another 10% of the revenue to come. That was not the number. That was not the number on March 31st or March 30th, whenever fuel spiked. If I have that right. Wait.

Yeah, 1Q, we were 90% booked, because remember, fuel spiked in early March. We were 90% already booked for 1Q. You aren't able to recapture with those fare increase some of the bookings because they were booked in January and February at a lower price. Everybody would have been largely in the same position as us because there were already bookings that had taken place for 1Q. Headline, I don't think there's no news there. It's just saying we aren't able in 1Q to take advantage of the fare increases because people had already bought fares at the lower prices. Going forward, once those fare increases started going in, very different story.

Okay. helpful. Ursula, maybe you could, I mean, I think you have $6 billion of unencumbered assets. I realize you probably don't wanna touch that quite yet, but if you could just talk about the accordion that you have, within that current structure, what scenarios you would see yourself looking to tap that $250 million, just in general? Thank you.

Thanks for the question, Conor. Extremely pleased with where we ended the quarter in terms of liquidity. Our target is the 17%-20%. We ended the quarter at 26%, we still have a cushion. Our original 2026 plan assumed that we would raise $500 million this year. We executed a deal utilizing aircraft to lock that in. We've drawn on a portion of that already, we'll draw on the second portion later this year. We obviously did build in that flexibility in the accordion, we do have an incremental $250 million that we can draw on. Given the magnitude of the fuel price impact that we're seeing in the business, we will most likely draw down on that in order to maintain our 17%-20% liquidity target.

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel McKenzie from Seaport Global. Please go ahead.

Oh, hey, good morning. Just Ursula, following up on that last question, what additional cash could potentially be raised from extracting equity from deliveries or just aircraft financing? You know, under, you know, what scenarios, you know, might you wanna raise additional capital beyond that accordion?

Thanks for the question, Dan. Our target is 17%-20% liquidity, I feel comfortable staying within that range. The aircraft that we're purchasing this year, there's 12 of them that are coming, we're assuming we purchase those with cash. If we are at risk of falling below our liquidity level, we could decide to lever up those new deliveries. As I mentioned in my script, we currently have a healthy unencumbered asset base of $6 billion. Of the $6 billion, about 30% is incremental aircraft and engines that we currently have on property. And then we also have our slot gates and routes, we have our brand, we have incremental loyalty that we can do. We have options.

If we're at risk of falling below our liquidity target, we'll assess all markets and look at all of our collateral and decide what would be the most effective.

Hmm. Yeah. Thanks for that. Second question here, you know, I think maybe for Dave or Marty. Just going back to the script here, two points of RASM-B from stronger than expected demand and demand that sort of accelerated at the end of the quarter. I suspect demand at the end of the quarter was worth more than two points of RASM-B. My question really is, what's driving that? How sustainable is it? At what point would you expect demand to be more elastic?

Hey, Dan. Thanks for the question. I'd say two things. I mean, I think if you look at the fourth quarter, when we did our fourth quarter call, three months ago, we did call out that, you know, we had revenue performance accelerating through the end of 2025. I think what we saw in early 2026 is just consistent with what we'd seen in general. With respect to the current revenue environment, I think it's clear that the revenue environment has been extremely robust, even in the face of, you know, pretty high fare increases. Frankly, I think that what you see in the industry right now is that air travel is still at a really, really good value.

The A4A put out a document last couple of months or so looking at price changes from 2019 until 2026. They're looking at 20, 30 different commodities. Air travel was the only one where prices are actually down from 2019. You know, eggs up 96%, air travel down 3%. And frankly, I look at this and I realize we still offer a really good value, and especially JetBlue, who's focused on, you know, the more, you know, lower fare part of the business. And I'll, you know, use the metaphor that we use here all the time, which is, it is very common that you can fly. In fact, we just looked a little bit ago.

You can fly, I think, the first couple of weeks of June, you can fly from Orlando to JFK for cheaper than it takes to take an Uber from JFK to Midtown. Air travel is still a fantastic, good value. Honestly, with the quality of JetBlue, I think demand has held up very, very well for us. We're very happy. Back to the point I made earlier, you know, even with the price increases, we still see economy demand strong and actually positive unit revenue in the economy cabins. I think it's actually very good for us.

Maybe I'll just add our JetForward initiatives, we do see them contributing to this. When you think about product loyalty and merchandising, they're driving stronger engagement and yield performance. Our co-brand acquisitions are up. Elements of the strategy are also contributing to this stronger environment specific to JetBlue.

Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Baker with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. Marty, JetBlue ordinarily generates less revenue in the third quarter relative to the second quarter. Of course, you know, there's a positive Easter benefit in this year's second quarter. I guess that, you know, makes the comparison even tougher. There's significant yield momentum right now. Fuel recapture improves over time. What probability would you ascribe, I'm not asking for a guide, but what probability would you ascribe to third quarter revenue being higher than that of second quarter? Is that simply off the table? No way.

I'd say a couple things. First of all, if you for someone not asking for a guide, you seem to be asking for a guide.

I'm asking for a probability. If you wanna give me a number, I'm just asking for a probability.

No, we've not guided third quarter. We're not going to guide third quarter. I will say that, you know, based on what we're seeing in the demand environment right now, we remain optimistic that, you know, we will continue as the year progresses to start recovering more and more of the increased price of fuel. Obviously, you know, we need to recover more than that because so many of our other inputs have gone up. I think we feel very optimistic of what we're seeing with demand. A second thing is, you know, certainly for the last month of the third quarter, you know, we've talked about capacity cuts, and as far as our internal planning, we've taken two to three points out of our second half supply.

Very much focused and/or concentrated more on the September through December period. We're assuming fuel prices at the current curve, and because of that, there's certainly capacity that we think will not be economical. I think that's also very much contributory to a good revenue environment. I will not go as far as giving you a guide or probability or any sort of percentages, but I'd say that as of now, we are very happy with the demand environment we're seeing, and not just in the premium cab, but also in coach.

You're saying there's a chance. Sorry. Second, Joanna Geraghty, you know, you're not an official member of this Association of Value Airlines, but I've seen varying press reports that maybe you did participate in the recent $2.5 billion bailout request. Can you just clarify and kind of bring us up to speed in general your thoughts as to selective government bailouts? Thanks.

Yeah, thanks. You know, I think maybe high level, it's no secret that I think the last administration definitely contributed to a disadvantage in the industry, whether it's, you know, Spirit and JetBlue's proposed merger or the blocking of the NEA. You know, I think that's obviously contributing to a sector that is, you know, less resilient compared to some of the larger carriers. You know, we're in a bit of a different position because we have obviously a very healthy uncovered asset base and strong liquidity. You know, never say never. We're open to anything and everything, assuming the terms would make sense for JetBlue.

At this point, you know, we're focused on continuing to execute JetForward, continuing to control the pieces of the business that we can control to offset the impact of elevated fuel prices. And we'll, you know, we'll watch, just like you're watching, the news and see how that shakes out with Spirit and the Value carriers and whether anything comes their way.

Your next question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Maybe just follow up right there. Joanna, in the scenario where Spirit gets support but nobody else does, would this influence your thinking about consolidation?

No. At the end of the day, you know, gosh, there's enough people out there that are commenting on every little piece of the business right now. Again, we're focused on executing the plan. You know, even in the situation where there is a potential Spirit bailout, we're gonna continue to execute our Fort Lauderdale strategy. I mean, as I think was mentioned in the script, Q1 ASMs were up 23%, RAS was up 5%. Customers are clearly picking JetBlue because it's a better product, a better service, and we're gonna fly, and they're not afraid flights are gonna get canceled. We've got a, you know, great plan, regardless of the outcome of Spirit. I feel for their people.

You know, we're hiring a number of them to try to make sure that they, you know, have a soft landing. It's a really, really tough, really tough situation. You know, there continues to be this imbalance of scale in the industry. We're doing what we can with Blue Sky, but it is full steam ahead in Fort Lauderdale, and we look forward to continuing to bring the great JetBlue product and service there. We're now the number one carrier at Fort Lauderdale, bigger than when we were pre-COVID, and we look forward to continuing to grow.

Thanks, thanks for those thoughts. Marty, as you think about dialing down your schedule in the second half, what is your focus? What types of flights are, you know, most under the microscope? Thanks for taking the questions.

All right, thanks. That's a simple one. I mean, fundamentally, we are assuming the fuel price for the rest of the year will match what the forward curve is saying. At that level, there are certainly a small percent of flights that we believe will not actually be accretive during that time period. Again, the economics of reducing capacity are very much biased towards reducing it further out in advance because you can save a lot of expense when you do that. You know, we did do a little bit of pulling from the May schedule, and our savings are much lower for that, for example, because, you know, the crews are already bid, they're gonna get paid one way or the other.

When we make decisions this early for the fall, it's actually very effective for us to save some significant expenses. When you see where the pulls are happening, it generally is, you know, off-peak periods, Tuesday, Wednesday, stuff like that. Nothing really unusual. Although we did say, and we are seeing good strength in the troughs, they're still troughs in comparison to the peak periods. I think it's just this is a math exercise rather than a strategic exercise. You know, our goal, you know, always our goal is to try to get to the best top margin we can get to. If we see stuff that will not be contributed to that, we will certainly take action.

Your next question comes from the line of Savanthi Syth with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Marty, maybe just on Fort Lauderdale, you know, given all the changes that you've done and the significant kind of investment there over the last years, I was curious, kind of post this summer re-banking is, you know, where are you in kind of the innings of really building up Fort Lauderdale outside of maybe kind of the opportunity if you get more gates?

That's a great question. I think that, you know, the real question is what happens with our biggest competitor there. Now, first of all, we have now added significant capacity down there. We're double the size of our next biggest competitor. We did not go into this with any expectation of Spirit going away. What we have done is we've taken advantage of gate availability that they've created with some of their pull-downs. We have been lucky enough to be able to take advantage of the gates to add more international service and have a more formal bank structure down there, which we're very excited about. To the extent that they keep pulling down, we will backfill that capacity.

frankly, you know, when you think about us adding, you know, a quarter of our capacity and still having, you know, RASM is basically one point off the system RASM, that is outstanding performance. I think what it shows is that, you know, the JetBlue value proposition resonates in South Florida. I think frankly, it's a market we're extremely excited about the arrival of the domestic first class product, later on in 2026. you know, my view is success should breed success, and we will absolutely continue to build Fort Lauderdale to the extent we can. I think when we first talked about Fort Lauderdale, we said we thought it would be, you know, our goal is to get it to the size of Boston. I'd say when gate ability happens, it will absolutely be at that point.

Instead of being focused on, you know, two focused cities sort of holding us up, we'll have a third leg of the stool in Fort Lauderdale. Again, a lot of that's gonna be predicated on gate availability.

Makes sense. Maybe just to follow up, you sort of brought it up, the other focus, when you first came back was really building the New England strength back up. Just where are you on kind of on that front?

I mean, fundamentally, I'm very comfortable with what we've done in New England. I think the addition of service in a place like, you know, Bradley, Providence, in addition to what we've done in Boston, I think we're really excited about and happy how the markets have responded. We're not doing Fort Lauderdale at the expense of those markets. You know, we do continue to have deliveries coming, which I think will help fund Fort Lauderdale a lot. You know, frankly, I think the most important thing to focus on is that the airplanes are gonna follow where the demand is. You know, we've been very happy with the demand we've seen in the Northeast.

We're sort of on year two of the ramp of these markets and, in general, more or less, ahead of where we expected they would be. Frankly, I'd say Fort Lauderdale is way ahead of the ramp that we'd expected. You know, I think that's how Fort Lauderdale is gonna attract more, more supply as we go forward. You know, we are sort of coming into this summer period, which is, you know, a somewhat lower demand period for Fort Lauderdale. I think, you know, once we get to the fall, sort of the November time period, I think we should expect significant additional growth in Fort Lauderdale to the extent that we have gates available.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Goldie with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for the question. You're seeing healthy card spend and acquisitions. Can you unpack this by region? Like, is this really JFK driven right now? How does that influence your thinking for the opening of Boston and as well as how things are trending with Fort Lauderdale?

Well, hey Michael, thanks for the question. I think first thing, you know, I would not say there's any significant regional differences at the card spend. There's certainly significant regional differences in where the cards are, the cards are basically New York, New Jersey, New England. You know, that's the majority of our card business. Frankly, one of the things we're focused on for 2026 is to increase our base in South Florida. I think we've done well with the credit card, I would say we're under indexed in South Florida versus where we should be. We already have efforts that are going on in South Florida to try to improve our card base.

Frankly, I think as we've added so much capacity down there, and then plus the addition of the United capacity into the Blue Sky redemption opportunities so that customers can fly anywhere in the world with the TrueBlue points, we're really bullish about our ability to have a really broad offering from South Florida, and that will translate into credit cards. Clearly, you know, given the location of the BlueHouse, you can tell that New York and Boston are the focal points for the credit card business right now. If we said this publicly, and I'll say it again, we are looking at trying to find space for a BlueHouse facility in Fort Lauderdale. For those of you who know, Terminal Three, it is a tough terminal as far as finding enough space for a lounge.

We are working with our partners at Broward County Airport division, trying to find a place for a lounge down there. No news to report because we haven't found the right solution yet that's right for everybody. I do think that's sort of the natural next sort of step, and that would be a very good help for things like card acquisition.

Then on Paisly, you continue to ramp Blue Sky. Can you talk about the pipeline and initiatives to add additional partners to scale this platform?

Are you saying partners over and above United?

For Paisly, we have talked to single-digit number of other entities, some airlines, some non-airline partners. We're in the RFP process right now with one partner, which we're very excited about. Nothing to report now as far as details, I think to the extent that airlines and other partners are looking at opportunities for looking for a partnership beyond some of the sort of traditional partners, I think we'll certainly be there for it. We are really, really excited about the technology platform that the Paisly team has built, I'm looking forward to finally getting our first RFP and our first evaluation after United, because I think we're going to be very competitive in this marketplace.

I think it's also worth noting that we are now, just now starting to get some of the United content into Paisly. Today, you can buy a JetBlue Vacations package that actually has United Airlines in it. We have JetBlue Vacations has sold packages to United destinations. We have rental cars coming very soon, hotels coming beginning of the third quarter, and we'll continue to go through the implementation for packages, cruises, things like that later in the year. The relationship with United has been very strong so far. They have great partners, and, you know, more than anything, we're excited to get their customer base experiencing the benefits of Paisly.

Your next question comes from the line of Tom Fitzgerald with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks so much for the time. Just wanted to stick with Blue Sky for a minute. I think it was on this call a year ago, you talked about a TrueBlue person who, or a customer who might need to be, you know, go to Omaha or Boise, and just like the value prop for them. Are you seeing the response from those type of customers that you hoped for? Like, what's just like, I know it's early days still, but what type of response have you seen from MileagePlus customers under your own network?

That's a great question, and we watch this very, very closely. We had put together a forecast of where we would expect United customers to book on us, and it's exactly what we expected. It's things like, you know, L.A. to New York, Boston to New York. Excuse me, L.A. to New York, San Fran to New York, San Fran to Boston. We've had surprisingly good results at DCA, you know, DCA to Florida and DCA to Boston, given United's large presence at Dulles. This is exactly what we were hoping for in this partnership.

You know, the ability to have JetBlue flights within the United distribution channel, I think is extremely helpful for us, because as strong as JetBlue is, you know, we don't have the same sort of share of mind in places like, you know, Washington, on the West Coast, places like that. It's doing exactly what we thought it would. We're very much looking forward to actually expanding this. We're still working on plans to create what we're calling mixed metal connections, which is customers will fly JetBlue into, let's just say example, you know, we just went back into New York to Houston, which we've been out of for a while.

You know, that'll be in the United banks, and customers can fly New York to Houston on JetBlue, and then fly Houston to El Paso or somewhere on United going forward. We don't have a date for that yet because that's actually a bit of a technology challenge, but we are optimistic that that will be coming as well. You know, overall, at the core, this is like the other 50 something interline relationships we have with a lot of partners. It just is with a very big airline that has really great distribution strength that complements our network really well.

I'll just add, I mean,the whole point is to not provide customers with any chance to choose anybody other than JetBlue, particularly in Boston, where we have a very robust schedule and network, likewise in New York. And we were with an investor who was telling us a story about how, you know, he was looking to fly to Asia, would typically have chosen one of our competitors that's large in Boston for that trip. Because we have this partnership with United, he booked on JetBlue, the United flight, earned TrueBlue points, and was able to fly to Asia, and picked us over the competitor because we have that connectivity.

You know, this is the goal of Blue Sky and the point about delivering more scale and a broader network to our customers, given that we do have, you know, a bit of a scale challenge in the markets that we're in.

JetBlue Airways (JBLU) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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