Executives on earnings call say booking trends deteriorated in February and got worse in March
JetBlue is expected to make an announcement during the second quarter about a domestic partnership with another airline, according to executives speaking on a first quarter earnings call. Marty St. George, president, said the partnership would offer a “significantly high network opportunity for earn and burn of TrueBlue points, which we think greatly improves the utility of TrueBlue.”
St. George said, “If today if you are a customer in the Northeast and you love JetBlue for leisure, but twice a year you have to go to Omaha or Boise, these are places that you can’t earn TrueBlue points on now, and when the partnership goes forward, you will be able to.”
American Airlines does not appear to be the prospective partner after it announced earlier this week that it had ended talks with JetBlue on a new partnership — and then sued the carrier over unpaid Northeast Alliance-related invoices. The Northeast Alliance was an American-JetBlue partnership that ended in 2023 after governmental antitrust action.
When asked by analysts whether “domestic partnership” meant a domestic airline or “providing domestic feed to a non-domestic airline,” St. George said the partnership will be with “a domestic airline with a larger network.”
Joanna Geraghty, CEO, said that relatively strong booking trends seen through January “deteriorated into February and worsened further in March.” As the company looks to the second half of the year, she said, “the outlook remains unpredictable, and given the macroeconomic uncertainty, we are not reaffirming our full-year guidance.”
The carrier reacted to the trends by “cutting capacity across 20 different markets,” St. George said. “We saw weakness across our domestic network. However, our international flying delivered relatively stronger performance year over year.”
JetBlue reported first-quarter passenger revenue of $1.97 billion, down 4.2% year over year. Total revenue was $2.14 billion, down 3.1%. The net loss for the first quarter was $208 million, compared with a first-quarter 2024 loss of $716 million.
