JetBlue’s CEO admits that the airline hasn’t felt like it’s winning – and that’s caused morale issues across the company. Flight attendants are demoralized, pilots are demoralized, and so are corporate employees: “We’re in a very challenging situation.” These comments were first reported by aviation watchdog JonNYC:
..[The morale issue] it's not just limited to Inflight, it's also at corporate where people are like 'another year of no profitability and then there will be a 7th to be clear' and probably an 8th. So we're in a very challenging situation."
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) May 29, 2025
Major morale issues at the airline date back a couple of years to before Joanna Geraghty’s tenure as CEO.
Employees saw her predecessor as making a series of strategic blunders, like the attempted acquisition of Spirit Airlines which would have supported growth enabled by the airline’s ill-fated partnership with American Airlines – yet he abandoned fighting for the American partnership in favor of a Spirit deal, where they ere overpaying for a troubled airline and investing resources in a deal that was ultimately killed on antitrust grounds (unbeknownst to them, a blessing in disguise not to pick up the recently-bankrupt carrier).
JetBlue has gone through downsizing of pilot workforce, cities served, and flights. They’ve scaled back on some product elements and led the industry raising bag charges. They are no longer chasing business travelers and attempting to downsize to profits, a notoriously difficult thing to do in an airline industry that rewards scale to amortize fixed costs and meet varied customer needs.
Their new strategic play is linking up with United Airlines in a way that brings that carrier back into New York JFK (as competition!) presumably in hopes of tighter collaboration, future Star Alliance membership, and potentially even acquisition. Will JetBlue sell itself to United?
Employees need more than a paycheck to motivate them. While pay is baseline, people need to respect their colleagues and feel they are on a mission greater than themselves. In other words, work needs to be pleasant and engaging and purposeful. If they feel their ability to be on a winning team is limited, that will have downstream effects on performance. And JetBlue hasn’t been a winning team in nearly 20 years.
Employees had the sense of a sinking ship after years of mismanagement and the discontent spilled out into the open a couple of years ago. Now, their CEO says the morale issues haven’t been turned around. She says employees need to get on board with the program, but in truth the program needs to be a strategic success to begin getting employees on board.
ZERO sympathy from me, someone who used to work for B6
What a nasty degrading company.
Buh
Bye!
Come now. Can’t be that bad. Partnership with United. Cheer up!
(For real, Mint is awesome. Keep that going. Please.)
B6 was a great marketing idea that has been poorly executed for its entire 25 year life.
They probably now have the best management team they have ever had but they are in a hole that is pretty deep to dig out of.
There really is very little that will come out of the UA partnership that will move the needle other than that UA will sell seats on B6 all for the privilege of returning to JFK in at best a single market where they will not have an advantage.
B6 has made alot of strategic mistakes but they played this deal perfectly. B6 dangled just enough access to JFK to satisfy UA’s “need” to get back to JFK w/ the larger impact of getting B6 into a larger loyalty program.
B6 needed some backing to turn itself around and this is what was needed.
Take a breath and check your work, Gary. Grammarly is not expensive…
Karma. Years ago many of these people working at JBLU predicted the demise of one or several legacy carriers. So here they are now dancing with whoever will throw them a line. So to all those JBLU people that were hoping for a failure to benefit them, I say “How bout them apples?”
@tim
So great to have someone who is an expert on everything and insists on sharing his insights on every post.
There’s little doubt in my mind that Jet Blue will be literally sucked up by United within a period of months…and for pennies on the dollar. If there is to be any workforce consolidation the seniority lists will be put together with a stapler.
UA. Just buy B6 and get this over with. Your chance of getting them is the best you’ll have.
They said a few months ago no partnership was happening. And that they aren’t interested in buying B6. I’m sure they are ironing out the purchase agreement now.
B6 marketing strategy was flawed from the beginning. Niche markets are for LCCs and they struggle with that as their employees are poached away by bigger paychecks at legacy carriers. Mergers and chapter 6 filings are coming.to an airline near you!
@Tom @Johnny — Get a room, fellas! Bah!
Said it before, I trust the flight crews and Pilot to complete every plane and each flight.
I don’t trust those in the Head office to fly the airline.
Have been a big fan of B6 for it’s entire existence. A TrueBlue traveller north, south, east, and west. Unprofitable for the last 6 years is trouble on the horizon. Cutting routes and costs may slow the losses but cutting away from business traveler will doom them. The concentration of routes thru the northeast hubs (JFK & BOS) cost them on-time performence which is killing them. I watch FlightAware and 5 and 6 hour delays almost daily are not acceptable. I’m not happy to see them go out of existence.
Mint is shint. Noo Yawk deserves a gigantic knock in the ego when they lose their hometown airline to, of all corporate people, Chicago’s Hometown Airline. Who’s the Second City now?
I took the buyout offered after the Spirit deal collapsed. IMO, Robin tried to make B6 too big too fast. Was only focused on new international routes when domestic travelers were complaining by the thousands.
In-house- Tech Ops doesn’t communicate with Operations so aircraft swaps happen too late. For over 10 years could never get a straight answer of why the disconnect between Tech Ops and Operations. Couldn’t fix that so I don’t have much faith moving forward. B6’s Twitter page are complaints that are fixable but aren’t.
It’s a sh!t show from top to bottom. The F.A.’s get absolutely no support or understanding from management ZERO! Every management action is a disciplinary action towards the F.A.’s. While the senior flight attendants can manipulate their schedules the new hires are at the mercy of all things holy!
Management takes out their anger on line staff over their hatred and disapproval of membership voting in favor of working under a contract. As a result management takes the hardest line possible when it comes to employee missteps. For example management will give late charges to employees arriving late to the gate knowing that the aircraft is arriving 60 minutes after the employee! Additionally that employee receives a late charge, but is NOT paid until the aircraft lands, deplanes, cleans, services, boards new passengers and closes the boarding door. If my salary was comparable to Joanna (total compensation is $6.76 million) my morale would have been outstanding!
@ O’Hare Is My Second Home –
Anyone buying a ticket to or from the NYC market is going to get hosed big time when United takes over. The duopoly with Delta will send prices through the roof.
As a recent first time B6 passenger I was pretty unimpressed just about everything. I paid through the nose for our tickets, there were numerous delays, I was unnecessarily moved to a later flight – nice surprise when you’re at the gate -, even though I paid the very highest price for an economy seat I still got soaked for baggage fees, and our bags were sent on a separate flight. In sum my experience was just awful. Hopefully the new CEO will improve things but it’s going to be some time before I choose to spend my money with them again.
Would like more details on exactly why morale is low and the company is unprofitable. How about a little insight here as that is what the article is about? Also, jetBlue, please stop making nearly everything cashless in your JFK terminal.
What do you call someone who copies their blog text into Word and hits F7 to run spell and grammar check?
Tim is a damn idiot.
Dude thinks he has to tell everyone why he is right and everyone else is wrong. B6 has flaws, sure. But it also has a cult like following.
It’s exactly why DL can’t crack BOS and JFK. B6 offers a better or on par experience at a better price point.
DL is just a copy cat of everything B6 innovated.
I have been happy with JetBlue for years. I hope that they continue.
As one who genuinely follows the airline industry having flown 100+ plus flights for each of the past 30 years, I believe JetBlue was founded by a true visionary. But wasn’t he shown the door by the board of directors many years ago as he was supposedly difficult to work with? JetBlue has gone downhill since then. His airline ventures since then have included successful startups in Brazil, and the USA like Breeze Airways. He should be brought back and encouraged to take the leadership once more or at least deeply consulted for his recommendations.
Jetblue has poor management
And the starting pay is lower than a regional carrier, sad!, this is partly why morale is low
At B6, New York base carrier, but employees can’t survive on the wages, So they leave in the bank revolving door to go to other carriers, the only employees that truly like working there are the ones who been there from the start for others its just a means to an end, they leave for higher pay, better benefits, no sympathy here, B6 B-gone already!
AA must be infuriated losing B6 to UA.
Will they direct their proxy AS to buy another airline?
avgeek3900,
DL indeed did copy B6′ seatback AVOD and WiFi- which UA is now copying but DL has executed both strategies on a much larger scale.
and DL is larger than B6 in both BOS and JFK as well as MCO and TPA and is 2/3 their size even in FLL
I remember well DL’s low cost carrier within a carrier strategies and they both very successfully have allowed to DL to grow to be the largest domestic carrier in the US on its own metal.
DL aggressively grew JFK faster than B6 when JFK slot controls were removed post 9/11 and at BOS during and after covid while B6 was trying a million strategies, nearly all of which failed, and in the process failed to defend its core markets.
I get the fanboyism we all have but much of your post is easily countered by actual facts.
JetBlue’s fundamental problem is that it’s not a viable business. I remember Gordon Bethune saying this when they launched and he wasn’t wrong. Their best shot was that partnership with AA. Now that it’s gone, I’m not sure they have a shot. I guess UA would be willing to buy their assets, but that’s problematic from an antitrust standpoint. In the meantime, we’ll have to see if they can keep muddling along
Whatever happened to the supposed merger with Southwest? Both airlines seem to have lost their way. It would be a better combination than selling out to UA to have an NYC centric airline, duplicating everything between JFK and EWR. The Trump administration may be business friendly, but I doubt they’re that business friendly. Especially his New York connection would probably preclude UA purchasing JetBlue.
I don’t always agree with Tim Dunn but if the reader slows down and actually READS what he says, many times it makes sense. “Song”, as he suggests, was extremely well received and it proved that, under controlled circumstances, Delta could integrate the low cost carrier model within the “not so low cost carrier” and still make money. The jets were re-branded Delta flying stock and flown by Delta pilots. What I glean from his posts is that he knows more about airline operations than he lets on. I AM in the airline business. I get it. The key to success, in my humble opinion, is to hire the best people, pay them a living wage, train them well and show them the “box” of rules and regulations. “This is what we expect you to do and we showed you how to do it.” Give them a path forward with pay commensurate with their skills. But then, the hardest part, in my opinion, is “stay within the box but if you have to go outside the box, do what is right by the customer.” “Doing right” goes back to hiring and training the right people. All of that is predicated on the management being competent first!
@Win Whitmire — Aww, another Song reference. Ah, those green 757s. Don’t forget United’s Ted, too.
Not an expert on airline mergers by any means. But it seemed to me that the US Govt should have allowed the Spirt merger (after killing the AA relationship). B6 is in trouble. That merger would have been an organized and orderly consolidation of business assets. If BK happens, it is the same end result except people get hurt financially.
thank you, Win.
and 1990, Ted was intended to be “less than” United. Song was created to be a focused airline within an airline that was specifically targeted at B6.
Song had a better coach product than DL at the time and DL incorporated the Song product into the entire mainline fleet.
ngl kinda satisfying to see, my one and only experience with JetBlue 2 years ago was so bad I had to submit a chargeback on my credit card. surely UA will pick them up
I am a LI based and enjoy B6. They have gotten better with ontime performance and deliver a good economy and Mint product. I am flying B6 from JFK-LAS. Let me know when AA or DL offer a lay flat seat for $680 each way on that route. Mint rivals any domestic F product outside of the few Flagship, Polaris, or D1 transcons.
Hey JonNYC,
You’ve identified the right peg (poor morale) yet miraculously pegged the wrong hole. Listen, you’re making it too obvious you only care about numbers. And that is the problem.
The aircrew morale sucks because they are being driven in the ground by a budget airline who could care less about their welfare. The crew could care less about the profitability at corporate; after all, a pilot’s skills are transferable to another airline that will treat them better once JetBlue crashes, and many flight attendants may be better off as a Starbucks barista.
The best selling business book,The Fifth Discipline” discusses the rise and fall of People Express as an example of how good companies can go wrong and die. It appears the cause of JetBlue’s problems may be similar. One or two big management mistakes may be all that it takes.
The airline industry as a whole, and especially the low cost and “new approach” segments, is a very unforgiving market. The big carriers’ profits are now almost entirely attributable to their mileage program partnerships,not actual flying.
Unfortunately, VP-level and even higher management learned their trade at the B-schools, where mergers and acquisitions and other financial tactics were a big part of the skill set being learned. So for that reason they often have a desire and see reasons to exercise those skills, instead of “minding the store”, or as in Boeing’s case, doing actual engineering.
The sad lesson is that the success rate of mergers is down around 25% to 30%. It’s almost always A Bad Idea, and the evidence is almost always visible. But every corporate executive with that itch will tell you, “Oh, but we will do it right!” Their egos tell them they can do it better, and doing it satisfied the same need for successful completion as an engineer gets with a new product.
The B-schools should quit supporting this another mania, and return to encouraging executives to mind the store.
Spending a ton of cash post COVID to go International was the worst call ever. The timing made no sense and was the straw that broke the B6 back.
I’ve been flying Jet Blue for the past 14 years – domestically, to the Caribbean and Mexico, and to London. Always had a pleasant experience – staff and planes were outstanding and the benefits of being a mosaic member were well worth it – priority seating and boarding. Flew Mint class with family to London – better than BA business class.
I hope the airline continues to fly – independent of UA. We live in Boston – many great options for jet blue flights out of Boston.
Mint to Paris was great in January; however, the price has jumped so high it isn’t worth it. Small meals and limited Bar Service. I can find better elsewhere
Booking a flight online with JetBlue is always a challenge.They need to simplify the process so the original quote makes it the actual price you pay not all the extra add ons. So many times I wanted to book with them until you realize that they are more expensive once you get to the different offerings. Make it simple. First class is X. Economy is Y. Boom