JBLU

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.

Okay. Okay.

That's.

Thank you.

Yeah.

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.

No, 1Q, we were 90%.

Oh, 1Q, sorry.

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.

Thank you.

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.

Yeah. Perfect. Thanks, guys.

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.

Excellent. Thank you, everybody.

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.

Thank you.

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.

Hopeful. Thank you.

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?

Yes.

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.

Thank you.

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.

Thanks so much for that. That's really helpful color. Then just as a follow-up for Ursula, just curious, just some of like, you guys have had, obviously it's been a pretty fluid environment the last few years coming out of COVID. Just like some lessons learned on pulling controllable spend out, kind of last minute or closer and then maybe you were expecting and then just like some levers you're looking to pull in the second half of the year. Thanks again for the time.

Yeah. Thanks, Tom. I mean, this is one area where I'm just like super proud of the team, and the way in which they've managed controllable costs. I mean, we pulled a significant amount of capacity out of the network last year, given the lack of demand, and the team found $40 million that allowed us to maintain our full year guide. We get creative. There's everything from, you know, better aligning hiring. We revised maintenance schedules. We reduced all discretionary spending. The team has made great progress on our fuel efficiency initiatives. You know, we have driven, you know, 5% savings over the last three years, and so super proud of the team.

They are in the process of also ramping up all the cost initiatives associated with JetForward. Creating a sourcing center of excellence, we're leveraging data science and AI to build tools so that we can drive better operating efficiency and put in place more effective planning. As a reminder, we've gone through and simplified the fleet, right? By exiting the E190. We've got multitude of levers at our disposal, and I'm confident that.

This year, our cost profile definitely improves in the second half of the year versus the first half. Q1 is kind of the high watermark. Obviously, it was also impacted by disruptions. As JetForward cost initiatives ramp through the rest of the year and as capacity grows slightly in the second half of the year, we'll continue to see efficiencies. We're gonna do everything we possibly can to come as close as possible to the original full-year controllable cost guide.

Your next question comes from the line of Brandon Oglenski with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, thank you for taking the question. Joanna, I mean, it's another frustrating year, right? Because we have volatility in oil markets, and it's, you know, 5th or 6th year here of not turning a profit or potentially not turning a profit, I should say. You mentioned it earlier, just the lack of scale versus maybe some of your larger competitors where there's, you know, objectively better balance sheet, better profitability. I mean, how do you structurally address the lack of scale in your business relative to those of your competitors that are doing better and have done better in this whole time period? Is there something you need to think about maybe strategically?

Yeah. Thanks, thanks for the question. I think maybe let me start with. I'll get to your question, but I want to start maybe first with JetForward. We are seeing JetForward working and driving underlying performance in the business. If you look at our operating margin for Q1, and adjust for fuel, it would have actually been five points better than the actual operating margin, three points better than implied guide. Negative 10 down to a negative five if you adjust with fuel, and the implied guide was actually negative eight. Some nice progress there. Year-over-year, there was a three point expansion when you adjust for fuel.

As you think about those early proof points, we are seeing Jet Forward working. We're seeing the gain from NPS. We're back to the top of the industry. You know, nice progress in Fort Lauderdale. Obviously, a five point rise in CASM spread in Q2 of this year, which is the most we've seen since the start of Jet Forward. We've got a whole series of initiatives. It's a big year for Jet Forward this year, including the Blue Sky implementation, BlueHouse lounges, the list goes on. The strategy is working. Obviously, the challenge is the macro environment and, you know, these the volatility that we just, you know, we keep seeing.

While the macro factors do impact the timing of our return to profitability, the goal is when those subside, that we're gonna see all the benefits of JetForward come to come to fruition. We're just gonna keep executing, try to control what we can. Probably the most overused expression lately, but control what we can and continue to execute those initiatives. Regarding scale, we recognize the importance of scale. That's why we tried to do the NEA. It's why we tried to do the Spirit merger. We've pivoted and we're focused on Blue Sky, and the early points we're seeing with Blue Sky are we are giving more utility and more relevance to customers and giving them a reason to choose JetBlue even though we maybe don't serve a particular destination because we're a bit smaller.

That said, we continue to raise these concerns in Washington, continue to focus on what are the things this government can do to help with that imbalance. You know, we're not focused on relying on the government. We're focused on, you know, what we can control and, you know, that's where Blue Sky comes in. Our network and our loyalty platform and how we continue to accelerate those, deepening relevance in the places where people know and love our brand, the Northeast, Fort Lauderdale. While scale will continue to be a challenge, I think, for, you know, all midsize and small carriers, we're controlling what we can. We think Blue Sky is an important part of helping with that. Then Paisly is the other piece of the puzzle.

You know, that's a very low capital business, one that should drive nice earnings over time and gives us sort of an independent revenue stream that should help propel us back to profitability over time. You know, the hope is when the macro subsides, you know, the plan will produce and, you know, those early signs are it is producing. It's just being masked by some of these macro headwinds.

I appreciate the very thorough answer, Joanna. Ursula, I guess as you think about capital needs, I mean, is taking potentially more debt the right path here as well?

Yeah, listen, I'm cognizant that the balance sheet isn't where we want it to be. It's clearly been strained post-COVID. You know, our number one priority is ensuring we maintain adequate liquidity to obviously navigate, you know, volatile times such as what we're in at the moment. I acknowledge the level of interest expense is material. We don't take debt raises that decision lightly. We need to maintain our liquidity target of 17%-20%, and we try to be super thoughtful and cognizant. I mean, our number one priority, as Joanna mentioned, is continuing to execute on JetForward and get to a break-even or better Op Margin. That was the goal this year. Clearly, we're now facing material headwinds, which makes that exceptionally challenging.

The goal is positive operating margin, number one. Number two is delivering free cash flow. Number three is delevering the balance sheet. We need to focus on the things we can control and execution. In terms of liquidity in the back half of this year, if there's risk that we fall out of our 17%-20% target, you know, we will assess, you know, all markets, and we've got $6 billion of unencumbered assets. We have some flexibility to choose, you know, how we raise on a go-forward basis.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Atul Maheswari with UBS. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. I wanna circle back on the second quarter recapture rate of 30%-40%. It does seem a little lower than some of your larger peers who are, say, about 10 points ahead on the recapture. Your booking curve is probably a bit shorter than them since you have more of a domestic business, and by that it would imply that more of the second quarter would be booked at higher fares for you. Any color on why the lower recapture rate versus the legacy peers would be helpful.

Yeah, thanks, Atul. I'm thinking about some of the things we heard in the other calls. I don't think we're dramatically lower than what I remember hearing. The one thing I would say is, I think the recapture rate is different at different fare levels. Back to the point we made about JetForward, like, the biggest goal we have in JetForward is to improve our penetration in the premium market. I'm guessing that the airlines that are the $6,000 business class fares to Asia may have a different recapture profile than we do. Again, that will be resolved or certainly get significantly better as we finish JetForward in the next 18 months or so. I don't look at our.

When I look at our own internal calculations as far as our recapture, they may be a slightly different shape curve, but, you know, end of 2026 or early 2027 is sort of what we've heard from other airlines as well. I'm not sure I agree with that.

I mean, I think we think it's maybe premium and corporate mix, which we're addressing through JetForward and, you know, our first class product launching at the end of the year. A little bit delayed maybe relative to them, but not, you know, not meaningfully.

Got it. That's helpful. Then as my second question, you know, on the capital raise plan that you have, the $750 in total, what fuel recapture and demand scenarios did you use to come up with that number, that $750 that you've secured for now? I think just understanding that would be helpful as we try to assess whether or not you might need to raise more capital later in the year. Thank you.

Yeah, our plan for 2026, our original budget had Brent at $63. Clearly, we're in an environment where it's severely elevated. The original budget for this year assumed we would raise $500 million in liquidity to maintain our 17%-20% liquidity target. We locked in that $500 million. As a reminder, we have an accordion, we can pull that accordion, that's an incremental $250 million. It's too early to tell, given the volatility of oil in the back half of this year, what the impact is going to be. This is part of the reason we pulled our full year guidance.

It is just the volatility has been so extreme, we don't have clear line of sight in the second half of this year. We will assess as we progress forward if we need to raise more liquidity to maintain that 17%-20% target.

I think the headline is we are planning for multiple scenarios at different fuel prices, and we're maintaining a level of flexibility so that we can time things and take advantage of our unencumbered asset base in the most favorable way possible. But it's anybody's guess where fuel's gonna be for, you know, the remainder of the year into next year, so we're trying to be flexible there.

That makes sense. Thanks a lot for that, and good luck with the rest of the year.

Your next question comes from the line of Christopher Stathoulopoulos with SIG. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I'll keep it to one question. As we, as we think about a response to demand elasticity or potentially demand destruction, I prefer more of the former as far as terminology. If you could perhaps frame potential resiliency around yields, you have a lot of initiatives out here, BlueHouse, JFK, Boston, domestic first class, of course, Blue Sky. Could you speak to that in a scenario where we do start to see some pushback or potential pressure bubbling up for more price-sensitive travelers against these initiatives that you have rolling out this year, as we think about yield resiliency and things like that? Thank you.

Yeah, maybe I'll start, and then I can throw it over to Marty. I think just first and foremost, we're not seeing any meaningful elasticity. Demand is strong across the booking curve. We are focused on yield. This is consistent with the broader industry trends. Load factor is holding up well. We are focused on cutting flights that don't make economic sense with the current fuel environment. When you think about unique things as part of JetBlue in terms of where we have resilience, our VFR customers are an extremely resilient part of the franchise. Obviously all the things we're doing to try to increase our premium share, which remains more resilient when inflation goes up, are all the right moves.

Domestic first, our even more space in the cabin, seeing really nice progress there. Then frankly, the locations we fly. I mean, Fort Lauderdale is where we're growing. The only place we're growing right now is the largest area in Florida with the highest income folks. It's much more premium than some of the other locations that we have. We're happy with what we're doing to try to make sure we're taking advantage of those more resilient customers. Inherently in our model, we do have a very strong portion of JetBlue customers who are VFR, who do go home to their family and friends over the holidays and for vacations, and they've always been very loyal to JetBlue.

A group that is quite resilient. I don't know, Marty, if there's anything you wanna?

No, I think the only thing I'd mention in addition to what Joanna said was, you know, we've already taken action as far as reducing capacity in the second half of the year. I'd say when we hit those windows of, you know, making significant cost commitments, we will clearly relook at that market demand environment at that time. If it makes sense for us to pull additional capacity, we certainly will. I mean, again, our number one goal is to make sure to get, you know, our margin back where we want it to be. I think being very flexible and open on capacity changes is an important part of that.

Great. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Catherine O'Brien with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, everyone. Thanks so much for the time. A bit of a follow-up to an earlier question, you noted a really strong 45% increase in credit card acquisitions in the quarter, and sounds like BlueHouse was one of the drivers of that. Can you give us some color on how much the JetBlue Premier Card growth was underlying that system number, and then if you're able to share if there's a notable difference in annual credit card spend between the Premier Card and some of your other cards?

Hey, Katie. Thanks. I would say a couple of things. We don't release a lot of detail, but I'll give you some color that I think should help. First thing is, we only lapped the Premier card in the first quarter. There's really no base. For half the quarter, there was no base to compare it to, so it was really only March that we had year-over-year numbers. For the first year, you know, we had put a, you know, what I would consider to be a conservative, prudent forecast in knowing the lounge was not open until later on in the year, and we significantly exceeded that number. When you go to the 45%, yes, the Premier card is definitely a contributor, but a lot of that is just the base Plus card that we offer every single day.

I think that, I wanna go back to the point we made earlier about Blue Sky. The secret sauce of Blue Sky is the utility it brings to TrueBlue. I should say the utility of a TrueBlue point dramatically changed when you got the ability to earn and burn anywhere in the world on the United network. I will throw into that, we didn't mention this in this call, but I'll throw it out here again. You know, later on this year, we will have full elite benefits between the two airlines as well. If you're a Mosaic X or Mosaic four, you'll have a experience like you would get on JetBlue when you fly on United later on this year.

Our goal is to make sure that our customers feel like that the TrueBlue program will bring them anywhere in the world they might potentially wanna go, which is something we have not had for a while. To me, when I see the acceleration at like we're seeing it, there's no change in approval rate as far as credit standards. It's just a lot more interest in the JetBlue card. That to me, that is something that really excites me about Blue Sky. I think people get very focused on, you know, comparing to other programs. You know, frankly, this ability to have, you know, worldwide access for our customers to fly places that JetBlue could never imagine flying, I think that to me is the game changer, and I think that's translating into credit card acquisitions.

I will also mention that, you know, we're very lucky that the core of our customer base is basically, you know, New York, New Jersey, New England. You know, if you look at the economic status of those customers, you know, it's generally a more affluent group and a high-spending group. You know, having the, having the spend go up as much as it did on the base card I think is also huge for us as well, and also better than some of the numbers you've heard from our competitors talking about spend.

That's really interesting. Maybe just final question for Ursula. Appreciate, you know, we've suspended the full year guidance. There's a lot of moving pieces. On my math, you know, based on the color you've given on the capacity cuts versus original plan and taking into account the first quarter, it looks like your capacity will be up, you know, low single-digit territory as of now. I guess first, correct me if I'm wrong, but if that's correct, is it reasonable to assume that on low single-digit capacity growth, your CASM ex-fuel would be kinda, you know, mid-single-digit range for the year based on your commentary on the relationship between capacity and CASM? I guess anything we should be aware of when thinking about the cadence over 3Q and 4Q? Thanks so much for the time.

Yeah. Thanks, Katie, for the question. I think the historical relationship still stands between capacity and CASM ex-fuel. If capacity is at mid-to-high single digits, you know, CASM ex-fuel would be flat. I think your example is roughly in that ballpark. As mentioned, in my script, we definitely expect CASM ex-fuel growth to moderate down during the second half of this year. Based on what we know in pulling, you know, two to three points of capacity in the second half of the year, our unit cost, you know, will be over two points less in 2H versus 1H. That's directionally where we sit today. I mean, I do acknowledge, you know, this is all dependent on the oil backdrop.

Clearly if we start to get some relief or further pressure, we will adjust capacity as necessary. I mentioned earlier, in the Q and A, I mean, the team has done historically a great job at executing uncontrollable costs, and I have a lot of confidence that we can get, you know, as close as we can to the prior guides, given what we know today.

Thanks so much. Appreciate it's a moving target.

Your next question comes from the line of Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Madison on for Ravi. Thanks for taking the question. I was just wondering if you guys could give just some more color. I know you've touched on it a bit, but just your thoughts on international in light of potential fuel storages in Europe, and kind of resource allocation across the company. If there's kind of like any opportunity to cut back there, or do you think you need to defend the spots you have?

Yeah, I appreciate the question. You know, we serve 8 different countries over in Europe. I think our frequency this summer will be about 14 daily flights. It's only 6% of our ASMs as we navigate through the summer. The point being, it is a small part of our network. Obviously, there continues to be supply concerns over in Europe. We're watching it very closely. We're working with A4A and our peers to advocate for, you know, certain operating procedures so that we can consume as much fuel as possible. We're also hopeful, given our flying is all long haul, that that will be more protected versus the short-haul flying. We're watching it very closely and we're engaged and involved, but the exposure is minimal for us.

Got it. That makes sense. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of John Godyn with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to better understand, you know, the philosophy behind the capacity cuts in the back half. I think it's fantastic that you guys are making some changes in response to fuel. It's not just you, but across the board, you know, companies have been a little bit reluctant to cut to levels that seem to more directly offset what's going on in the fuel environment. What is your guiding light as you contemplate 2%-3% being appropriate and maybe the next cut behind it? Is it trying to get to 100% pass-through? 2%-3% doesn't get you there.

It doesn't seem to be free cash flow because you're not, you know, you're targeting free cash flow positive by the end of 27. It's not margin neutrality. I'm just trying to understand, like, when you're running these scenarios, what is the output that you are managing to?

Hey, John. Thanks for the question. I mean, I would say that it kinda is the free cash flow. It's just basically the EBIT overall. Our goal is to, you know, contribute as much to paying, to getting a positive EBIT as we can with the assets we have. To the extent that we make decisions early and we have the ability to save more of the expenses, and we think that with the fuel price that we're assuming for the rest of the year, and demand we're expecting, especially in trough periods, I think it's actually very important that we take action soon to make sure that we do what we can to maximize our EBIT.

I would say that I do think, you know, I've seen a lot more talk of capacity cuts than I've seen actual action in the rest of the industry. I'm not sure that I'm as positive about what you say the other airlines are doing. I'll be clear that we are taking action. You know, As you go back to the pre-war guide that we did, you know, our goal is to get to positive op margin this year. You know, we've suspended that guidance obviously, but our goal is to get, you know, do everything we can to make sure we get as close to that number as possible.

Frankly, you know, my view is, you know, given the fuel curve we're seeing right now, it would be imprudent to make decisions that would put it, that would not be profit-maximizing. We do have some constraints with our slot base at JFK. I think it's worth mentioning that, you know, this is a long-term asset for the company, and unfortunately, we probably could cancel a little bit more if we were willing to take the risk on slots. That's actually not a risk we wanna take because, frankly, this is a transitory situation, and I do think we'll eventually get back to normal.

We wanna make sure that we will absolutely be in a position, you know, to maintain our franchise at JFK, and I think giving up slots would be a very bad idea in the short term. The last issue is we are so happy with what we're seeing in Fort Lauderdale. I'd say there'd be fewer cuts in Fort Lauderdale than elsewhere just because the demand is coming in as well as it is. Clearly, with fuel up 75%, it's not quite 75% in the fourth quarter, but with fuel up as much as it is for the rest of the year, there are absolutely gonna be flights that will not be cash contributors, and those flights have to go.

Yeah, you know, that makes sense. You know, if I just look at the fuel curve today, round numbers, it seems to imply, like, a 30% reduction in fuel from current spot by the end of the year. You know, I know that we need some basis for an estimate, and I can appreciate that you guys are using the fuel curve, but you've got a very large embedded fuel tailwind kind of making the math work from here. It seems like you could hit the pass-through numbers that you're describing even if the demand environment didn't improve at all. I'm not quite sure that that's, like, a reasonable framework. I don't know. It feels like you do, but maybe we could just talk about that a little bit?

I think that's a great question. Frankly, we look at the fuel curve and wonder how realistic it is during that time period. That's one of the reasons why, you know, I made a comment earlier in the answer, you know, when we hit those windows of making commitments on cost with respect to things like, you know, bidding pilot schedules and things like that, before we get to that point, we will reevaluate the capacity plan we're offering. If it turns out the fuel curve ends up being better than we expected, you know, maybe we put some flights back. If the fuel curve is worse than we expected, we will make sure to do the evaluation when we can pull more with the goal of saving as much of the money as possible.

you know, my view of this is, this is just prudent business, and we will continue to watch that curve. I think if you think about that timeframe of 90 to, you know, 90-ish days out when we have a pretty good handle on saving some of the costs, I think we'll have a much, much better view of the fuel cost 90 days out than we have right now for six months out.

We're gonna maintain as much flexibility as possible. I think that's the headline. If you could tell me where fuel's gonna be in September, then I could tell you closer to what my capacity is gonna look like in September. At the end of the day, you know, given where the demand environment is right now, and the investments in Fort Lauderdale and the slot portfolio in New York, you know, we wanna be mindful, we fully appreciate, I mean, you know, we need to be aggressive in capacity cuts, to the extent that fuel remains in a highly elevated state for the rest of the year.

Yeah. I mean, I follow the logic. It, you know, I can't tell you where fuel prices are gonna be, but it seems plausible they could just be flat from here. And it doesn't seem like that's being contemplated in a.

Yeah

In a serious way.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yep. It's possible.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks, but thanks. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

Good morning. My name is Krista, and I would like to welcome everyone to the JetBlue Airways Corporation Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to JetBlue's Director of Investor Relations, Koosh Patel. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us for our fourth quarter 2025 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, Martin St. George, our President, and Ursula Hurley, our Chief Financial Officer. Today's call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding our first quarter full-year 2026 financial outlook, and future results of operations and financial position including long-term financial targets. Industry and market trends, expectations with respect to tailwinds and headwinds, our ability to achieve operational potential targets, our business strategy for future operations, and the associated impacts on our business. All such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Please refer to our most recent earnings release as well as the 2024 10-Ks and other filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. The statements made during this call are made only as of the date of this call. Other than as may be required by law, we undertake no obligation to update this information. Investors should not place undue reliance on these statements. Also, during the course of this call, we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Joanna Geraghty, our JetBlue CEO.

Good morning, and thank you for joining JetBlue Airways Corporation's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. I want to thank our crew members for their continued dedication to running a safe operation, especially during Winter Storm Fern. We've canceled over 1,100 flights as a result of the storm, and the industry remains in recovery mode. While today's forward-looking guidance excludes the storm's impact, given January is typically a trough period for us, we do not currently expect the impact to be material to achieving our full-year earnings guidance. Before we get to 2026, let's take a look back at 2025. In the first full calendar year of our Jet Forward transformation, I am very proud of what we've accomplished. In the face of a government shutdown, macro uncertainty, and aircraft-related groundings disproportionately impacting JetBlue, we stayed focused and continued to work toward our goals. Operational performance has been a key proof point of our strategic transformation. In 2025, we beat all of our on-time performance targets, improved every one of these metrics versus the prior year, and narrowed the gap relative to others. What makes this even more significant is that it follows an equally strong 2024, when we also beat all of our on-time performance targets. Two consecutive years of reliability improvements are a direct result of Jet Forward investments, smarter planning, disciplined execution, and our team's daily focus on doing the basics well, all in the most challenging airspace in the world. Our customers are recognizing these meaningful reliability improvements. I want to emphasize this. In 2025, we achieved an eight-point gain in Net Promoter Score and a 17-point gain since the beginning of 2024 and the launch of Jet Forward, making us once again a leader in customer satisfaction. This improved experience is driving loyalty and, in turn, has increased the rate at which customers return to fly JetBlue. The progress we've made on delivering reliable and caring service not only increases customer satisfaction, it also sets a solid foundation to enable the success of our other priority moves. Our products and perks are increasingly capturing more premium revenue, following the enhancement of Even More and the continued outperformance of preferred seating, the release of our premium credit card, which far exceeded sign-up targets last year, and the opening of our first-ever lounge at JFK. And not to forget, we won the J.D. Power Award for the Best Business Class Product last year. Network changes continued to progress well, even as we capitalized on near-term strategic opportunities in Fort Lauderdale, where customer response to our close-in schedule additions has greatly exceeded our expectations. Underlying it all, we maintained a tight hold on costs in the face of meaningful capacity reductions. Taken together, these Jet Forward initiatives delivered $305 million of incremental EBIT, slightly better than our initial expectations. This outcome gives me great confidence that Jet Forward continues to be the right plan. Macro uncertainty pressured industry demand last year and impacted results versus our initial full-year operating margin guidance of 2% to 1%. As previously shared, we estimate this uncertainty represented more than four points of headwind to operating margin for the year, impeding our path to restoring operating profitability in 2025 and resulting in an adjusted operating margin of negative 3.7%. Looking ahead to 2026, we are focused on turning the progress from our Jet Forward initiative into improved profitability. At a high level, our full-year guidance is based upon 3.5 points of capacity growth, 3.5 points of unit revenue improvement, and 2% non-fuel unit cost growth, all contributing to our forecast of breakeven operating margin or better. Our guidance assumes the macro environment continues to provide a constructive baseline for demand. Any incremental recovery in GDP or reduction in fuel prices beyond consensus estimates represents potential upside as 2026 progresses. Critically, we expect to deliver $310 million of incremental EBIT from Jet Forward this year for a total of $615 million in 2026. This keeps us on track to deliver $850 million to $950 million of total incremental EBIT for the full year 2027. The incremental EBIT growth in 2026 is driven by the continued ramp of our existing initiatives and the launch of several exciting new initiatives, including rolling out the remaining key components of our Blue Sky collaboration with United, the opening of our Boston lounge, and the launch of our domestic first-class product. Though it has already been a dynamic start to the year, with the temporary closure of a portion of Caribbean airspace and Winter Storm Fern, our focus remains on controlling what we can and translating these efforts into several points of operating margin improvement in 2026. With that, I will turn it over to Marty.

Thank you, Joanna. And once again, a sincere thank you to our crew members who stepped up to keep our operation running safely throughout 2025 and into 2026. Turning to slide seven of the presentation. Fourth quarter year-over-year unit revenue finished up 0.2%, over two points better than our guidance midpoint, nearly three points better than our third-quarter performance. The majority of our RASM beat was driven by underlying demand strength, coupled with loyalty, ancillaries, and other revenue exceeding expectations. Importantly, those trends have carried forward into early first-quarter bookings. We've seen a healthy recovery in domestic performance, with year-over-year RASM for the fourth quarter better than that of international flying. The booking curve further normalized throughout the quarter, with strong close-in booking performance for holiday travel that was more in line with historic levels. And as we've discussed throughout the year, the fourth quarter continued to show strong peak period performance, while off-peak demand remained more pressured. Our positive RASM was propelled by premium growth, with premium RASM outperforming core RASM by 13 points in the quarter, reinforcing the strategic importance of our investments in Mint, Even More, loyalty lounges, and coming later this year, domestic first. To complement this addition, we are also refreshing our award-winning Mint cabins in-flight food menu later this year. We have over a decade of experience serving the premium customer, and we are excited to continue refining the premium experience, whether in Mint, Blue House, or domestic first class. We are also proud of the improvements we have made to our core with changes to our Blue Basic fare, improvements in reliability and hospitality. We continue to make refinements across the cabin to make sure that all customers have a reason to return to JetBlue. Additionally, the improvements we've made to our operation and customer experience through Jet Forward have translated into even stronger brand loyalty. And we capitalized on that in 2025. Loyalty revenue grew by 8% for the full year, in a year when capacity was down 1.6%, and now accounts for over 13% of total revenue, up from 11% in 2023. The introduction of our Blue Sky collaboration with United has made TrueBlue even more relevant across new geographies, and combined with our loyalty program's leading customer satisfaction, gives us confidence in continued outsized loyalty and premium growth. Brand performance accelerated throughout the year, with double-digit spend growth and over 30% growth in new co-brand account acquisitions in the fourth quarter. Our first lounge, called Blue House, is generating great reviews. Since opening, we've seen lounge NPS in the mid-eighties, alongside a meaningful increase in the acquisition rate of our premium co-branded credit card. Turning to the network. In the fourth quarter, we added significant close-in capacity to our Fort Lauderdale focus city. The ramp of this strategic expansion, where we've announced over 20 new nonstop destinations plus increased frequency on a dozen others, is materializing faster than our initial expectations. While we initially expected a one-point RASM headwind in the fourth quarter, the resulting impact was closer to 0.5 points, reflecting customers' strong response to our scheduled additions and preference for our award-winning customer experience. Fort Lauderdale represents a strong premium leisure market as both an origin and destination. We are now offering up to 26 daily Mint flights touching Fort Lauderdale this winter, offering more domestic first-class seats than any other carrier in Florida. In addition, Fort Lauderdale is set strategically between a strong foothold in the Northeast and a robust Latin and Caribbean network, making it a well-placed connection gateway for customers, with significant upside potential for JetBlue. With our far better customer experience and competitive low fares, and now more destinations, we are pleased to bring even more value and choice to customers in Fort Lauderdale and across South Florida. These initiatives and more contributed to our Jet Forward performance in 2025. Jet Forward delivered a total of $305 million of incremental EBIT last year. On Slide eight of our earnings presentation, we've broken down each priority move and the key initiatives that delivered value in 2025. We're capitalizing on this progress and more in 2026. It will be a big year for Blue Sky, as we expect to roll out the remaining key features of this collaboration with United throughout the year. We expect to activate cross-selling interline flights on each other's websites very soon. This will be followed by mutual elite customer loyalty benefits turning on as the year progresses. Through the second quarter, we expect to begin selling United non-air ancillaries through our Paisley subsidiary. We plan to launch with car rentals, followed by hotels, cruises, vacation packages, and travel insurance, with the expectation to be selling all ancillary products by the end of the year. Lastly, turning to guidance. For the first quarter, we expect capacity to be up 0.5% to 3.5% year-over-year, with unit revenue growth in the range of flat to up 4%, supported by demand momentum exiting the fourth quarter and a constructive competitive capacity backdrop. We estimate the closure of Caribbean airspace in early January, and some lingering demand impact will be a headwind to RASM of less than a point for the quarter, which is incorporated in our guidance. As Joanna mentioned, not incorporated in our formal guidance are the recent impacts of Winter Storm Fern. For the full year, we plan to deliver unit revenue growth of 2% to 5% on capacity growth of 2.5% to 4.5%, contributing to breakeven operating profitability or better. We expect positive year-over-year RASM growth in each quarter in 2026, but more weighted towards the second half of the year as initiatives ramp. Our RASM guidance is dependent on four key drivers, highlighted on Slide 10 of our presentation. These drivers are part of Jet Forward and largely within our control, which gives me confidence in our ability to execute. The largest driver is loyalty, driving about one point of year-over-year RASM. We expect to grow loyalty revenue as a percentage of total revenue by about one point to 14%, driven by added redemption options and the opening of lounges. Next, our product enhancements, which are expected to contribute three-quarters of a point of RASM. These enhancements help to drive yield and improve load factor as our offering evolves. Additionally, Blue Sky and Paisley are expected to drive another three-quarters of a point, and we believe the maturing of our network changes and improving customer satisfaction will contribute the remaining half a point to get to a full-year RASM midpoint of up 3.5%. Ultimately, we expect the combination of these drivers and over 200 underlying Jet Forward initiatives to result in a more competitive customer value proposition, translating to RASM growth exceeding CASM growth this year and supporting our path back to sustained profitability. While the environment remains dynamic, the progress we've made through Jet Forward gives us confidence we are positioned to deliver on our commitments in 2026. I will now turn it over to Ursula.

Thank you, Marty. I want to reiterate what Joanna has said about 2025. I am very proud of our team for controlling what we could amidst a dynamic environment to deliver on our full-year cost outlook and build a strong foundation for what's next. We adjusted our business to navigate a challenging macro environment. We proactively reduced capacity by two points over the year as demand softened. We identified cost savings above and beyond our initial budget, and most importantly, we progressed on Jet Forward and delivered $305 million of incremental EBIT in the face of all these challenges. Turning to Slide 12. The fourth quarter was marked by a high volume of unforeseen external events. Despite this, the team did an excellent job recovering from each event and moving forward under difficult circumstances. For the quarter, CASM ex-fuel was up 6.7%. Disruptions from the government shutdown, the Airbus airworthiness directive, and two major weather events added costs, reduced capacity by nearly two points, and drove the gap to our initial CASM ex-fuel guidance. Fuel price was also a headwind in the quarter, with crack spreads rising sharply in late October and later moderating in conjunction with Brent, resulting in a fuel price of $2.51 versus our mid-expectation of $2.40. For the full year, CASM ex-fuel finished up 6.2%. Given full-year capacity was reduced by nearly two points versus our initial expectations, I am especially proud of the team for managing costs within our initial range of up 5% to 7%. And in our first official year of Jet Forward, we achieved substantial cost savings driven by initiatives like improved tooling and utilization of AI to optimize planning, better manage disruptions, and enable greater self-service. On the support center side, we strengthened efficiencies in our fixed costs. We also began modernizing fuel processes, unlocking cost savings through technology, process, and operation initiatives. Shifting to 2026, we expect full-year CASM ex-fuel growth of 1% to 3% driven by several factors. We averaged nine aircraft on ground from GTF-related issues in 2025, and we expect that number to be in the mid-single digits in 2026. New deliveries will also drive capacity growth this year and provide tailwinds to labor productivity and fixed costs. Additionally, we are seeing benefits from fleet simplification efforts as we are now down to two fleet types. These benefits will be offset by higher rents and landing fees, investments in our customer experience, and the impact of tariffs. CASM ex-fuel in the first quarter is expected to grow the most of any quarter in the range of 3.5% to 5.5%, largely due to elevated maintenance expense. CASM ex-fuel growth is expected to moderate downward over the year and especially in the second half when we expect roughly flat year-over-year CASM ex-fuel as Jet Forward cost savings and initiatives ramp up and year-over-year capacity grows. We estimate fuel price to be at the midpoint of our ranges, $2.34 for the first quarter and $2.27 for the full year. Encouragingly, fuel efficiency remains a tailwind this year. ASMs per gallon are expected to improve by approximately 1.5% in 2026, contributing to an approximately 5% total improvement over the last three years, driven by the retirement of the E190 fleet and substantial fuel savings initiatives as part of Jet Forward. For reference, 5% of our annual fuel cost equates to $100 million of savings in 2026. Powered by an improving macro backdrop and $310 million of incremental Jet Forward EBIT, we expect RASM growth of 2% to 5% and CASM ex-fuel growth of 1% to 3% will drive breakeven or better operating profitability this year. Turning to capital allocation and our financial priorities. On slide 13. In 2025, we invested $1.1 billion in capital expenditures, primarily consisting of 20 aircraft deliveries. For 2026, we expect capital expenditures of approximately $900 million, driven by 14 aircraft deliveries and the start of domestic first-class retrofits. Since the start of Jet Forward, we've worked to secure our financial future by cutting in half our planned 2026 through 2029 capital spending from $6 billion to $3 billion. As a result of these efforts, CapEx is expected to remain below $1 billion annually through the end of the decade, enabling low to mid-single-digit annual capacity growth while also accelerating our return to positive free cash flow. We ended the year with $2.5 billion of liquidity, excluding our undrawn $600 million revolving credit facility. This year, we expect to repay approximately $800 million of debt throughout the year, including $325 million outstanding on our 2021 convertible notes, which mature this April. To address cash needs, we intend to raise approximately $500 million in new financing, supported by roughly $6.5 billion of unencumbered assets. We are focused on aircraft-backed financing and are evaluating all available markets as we prioritize securing low-cost capital. For the year, we expect gross interest expense of approximately $580 million. We know there is still much work to do on our balance sheet, but I am encouraged by steps in the right direction. Gross debt peaked last year, and in 2026, we expect our leverage profile, measured by net debt to EBITDA, to begin to improve and benefit from Jet Forward's substantial growth in our EBITDA and help us reach our goal of restoring full-year operating profitability. As we look ahead, our priorities remain the same: getting back to sustained operating profitability, followed by generating positive free cash flow and restoring the health of our balance sheet. We believe there is a path to generating free cash flow by 2027. In closing, while 2025 brought unexpected challenges, it also marked a year of meaningful progress that strengthened JetBlue's foundation and reinforced our confidence that Jet Forward is working. We enter 2026 focused, energized, and committed to returning to breakeven profitability or better. The macro backdrop is improving, we're excited to be growing again, our operation is performing at a level we haven't seen in years, and our commercial initiatives continue to ramp with new initiatives rolling out. From Blue Sky to the launch of domestic first class and the opening of our second lounge in my hometown of Boston. At the same time, we are returning to disciplined low single-digit cost growth. With these elements coming together, we believe we are well-positioned to restore profitability, and I am eager for what comes next for JetBlue. With that, Krista will open the call for questions.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Star one. We also ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. For any additional questions, please re-queue. And your first question comes from Dan McKenzie with Seaport Global. Please go ahead.

Oh, hey. Thanks for the time, you guys. So premium is clearly outperforming leisure today. So my first question really starts there. And, you know, that is that premium seats today, I guess, are 25% of the total flying. But I'm wondering what percent of revenue they comprise and what you would expect that to be when you exit 2027. So I'm thinking it's probably 30% plus today, and the question becomes, could it be over, you know, could premium revenue be, you know, over 40% of revenue in 2027?

Hey. I'll take that, Dan. Thanks for the question. So we generally have not released that number, and I think as premium becomes a bigger and bigger part, we'll figure out how we want to manage that in the future. The one thing I do want to stress is that with the introduction of the domestic first-class product later on this year, the total percentage of premium seats is not going up dramatically. That product is basically being funded from a reduction in the Even More cabin. However, the quality of the seats actually goes way up, as does the yield. So it is absolutely accretive. The benefit of the domestic first class is clearly in the products and perks initiative under Jet Forward. And we're really excited about the continued momentum we've seen for premium products. You know, whether it's lounges, Mint, Even More. You know, we have a really great track record as far as being able to deliver premium products for our customers. Our customers love them, and we are really excited to use first class later this year domestically.

Mhmm. Yep. Yeah. Second question here just ties to leisure revenue and the, you know, recovery glide path that the current guide embeds. And, I'm thinking leisure fares so far this month are, you know, largely flat year over year, and I'm just wondering if that full-year guide embeds sort of the flattish revenue, you know, leisure component or what that recovery, the shape of that recovery could look like.

So it's a great question. And I will start with the line I use pretty much every call. It's just regard what we see. And the trajectory of 2026 unit revenue is fundamentally based on fourth-quarter performance and first-quarter bookings. So, you know, you'll hear us use a word today that we generally haven't used in well over a year, which is strong. Bookings are strong right now. And I think what I'm especially excited about is, you know, we've seen a nice recovery of leisure customers. And, frankly, I cannot talk enough about how pleasantly surprised we've been with the speed of the adoption of our new capacity in Fort Lauderdale. That's been a very nice contributor. But overall, when you look at our operational improvements, you look at the improvements in the loyalty program, the resulting increase in NPS. I think we sort of have a flywheel of goodness going on right now. That's resulting in great unit revenue. There are no big assumptions of, you know, a GDP snapback quickly. You know, a significant change in the competitive ASMs. Basically, we're sort of forecasting based on what we see right now.

Yep. Thanks for the time, you guys.

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

Hey. Thank you. Good morning. Marty, that word demand strength, which you haven't used in a while, what is different about the trends that you're seeing now? Maybe you could speak to changes in the booking curve. And then for my follow-up, which I'll state right up front, you know, to what extent is competitive capacity in the first half, you know, contributing to that?

Hey, Duane. So let me start with a little more color around what we mean by the word strong. I think that the thing that has been most interesting to us is the recovery in the domestic coach market. You know, I made a comment in the remarks about how domestic and international performance has been converging, which I think we're very optimistic about. I'll also say that the booking curve looks very normal. I think if you go back to 2025, what you would have heard us say in calls was the bookings are coming. They're coming very close in. And there was a little bit of apprehension of, you know, you're sort of sitting here with bated breath waiting to make sure the bookings actually came. That's really not what we're seeing now. We're seeing a very normal booking curve. With the exception of The Caribbean, for the first couple weeks of January where we did see a bit of a drop. Which, by the way, we're back to positive year-over-year in The Caribbean. So that was a blip that's been temporal and much better now. It just looks like a normal demand year, which I'm very, very optimistic about. With respect to competitive capacity, yes. And we're in a relatively good competitive capacity environment right now. We have had our biggest competitor in Fort Lauderdale pull down dramatically. We have not made any assumptions about any further pull downs or any significant change in competitive capacity. I will say that the first quarter is very, very clear as far as what's out there right now. I think the second quarter still has some time to settle down. You know, we're still selling more in the second quarter than we're probably gonna fly. But that's generally what you've seen in the time periods when you've got strong peaks and weak troughs where it appears that there's a sort of a big net strategy, and then you winnow it down a little bit closer in. But there is no, I want to make it really clear in this call, there is no magic hat with a rabbit in it of some sort of a big surprise that's gonna make these numbers. This is just execution of the Jet Forward plan on top of the existing strength in industry revenue right now. That's one of the reasons we're so optimistic about 2026.

Thank you.

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

Hey. Good morning. I was wondering, Marty, just to follow-up on Fort Lauderdale. Could you talk about just, you know, how Fort Lauderdale might be changing kind of the current strategy other than just getting bigger? Like, are the connections going to be bigger as a result in terms of total system? Just how should we think about Fort Lauderdale, you know, once this is kind of fully baked in versus kind of the strategy and setup, you know, two, three years ago?

Thanks, Savanthi. First thing I'll say is I think we should acknowledge Fort Lauderdale is our very first destination. The original JetBlue flight flew from JFK to Fort Lauderdale. We haven't felt that. The history of JetBlue and Fort Lauderdale is as long as the history of JetBlue. And we've had a lot of in Fort Lauderdale over the years. I think you go back ten years or so when we announced publicly this concept we called one forty, which was growing Fort Lauderdale to about 140 flights a day. Had trouble executing that mostly because of gate resources in the airport. It is a relatively constrained airport, especially constrained for international gates. And you look at the opportunities to grow, you know, we have a pretty solid slate of destinations north of Fort Lauderdale. Our challenges are really to, you know, Caribbean, Central, and South America. And for that reason, the lack of international gates has been a problem for us. I'd say with the pull downs that we've seen from Spirit in Fort Lauderdale, gate resources have become available. And, you know, we've wanted this for many, many years. So when the opportunity came up, we jumped on it very, very quickly to make sure that we could backfill. Because this is an aspiration we've had for a long time. And I would say that, you know, starting with crew members and also investors, you know, we have continually gotten this feedback of you need to diversify beyond the Northeast. And, you know, I think if you're looking for diversification beyond the Northeast, this is it. I mean, Fort Lauderdale is a great premium market. South Florida, great premium market, the best premium in Florida. And, obviously, we have a very premium-heavy strategy going forward. Number two, geographically, it is a perfect location between north and south. So I think given the franchise that we already have in South Florida, the opportunity to grow there, we're really bullish on Fort Lauderdale. Specifically, yes, we have more of a bank structure in Fort Lauderdale than we have historically for connectivity. And as gates become available, we'll continue to enhance that. And in fact, you know, we are currently in the process of expanding our banking plans there. We don't really want to become a legacy hub and spoke airline, so it's not going to that extent. But the extent to which we can create casual connections at good departure times in Fort Lauderdale, we will to take advantage of it. And so far, it's performed very well from a tech perspective. I think for those customers who have connected in Miami versus connecting in Fort Lauderdale, I think I know which one everybody would pick. And it seems like customers are picking it. And Fort Lauderdale has done very well for that.

That's helpful. If I might just quickly follow-up for Ursula. Just on the $500 million that you plan to raise this year, is that reflected in the interest expense guide? Is that or is that kind of potentially an increase to the interest expense assumption?

Good morning, Savanthi. Yes. The interest expense is included in the $580 million guide. I will note the $500 million that we're anticipating raising will probably be in dual tranches. So there could be a portion of that raise which happens early in the year to support the convertible debt paydown that is due in April, and then the second tranche of the financing most likely will happen in the back half of the year.

That's helpful. Thank you.

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

Hey, everyone. Thanks very much for the time. It's good to see that the premium credit card sign-ups are exceeding your expectations. I was wondering if that's primarily in the New York area, just given the lounge, or if you're seeing that throughout the network or in new geographies or any details you'd want to expand on there?

It's really throughout the system, and I think it's because the premium credit card itself actually has a great value proposition. And, frankly, a lot of our customers touch New York. So even if you don't live in New York, it's generally an important destination. And I think when we get New York and Boston both up, we're really bullish about the premium credit card. It also has a lower annual fee than other airlines' and banks' premium credit cards. And I sort of mentioned this in the script, and put this in a release, but didn't put it in the script. Our friends at Bain who do, like, industry-level NPS scores, have now given us permission. We can say that TrueBlue has the highest NPS of any loyalty program of any airline in the US. So I think, again, back to the concept of the flywheel, success sort of breeds success. So we're very excited with the card. You know, our partnership with Barclays is absolutely fantastic. And I'm really optimistic about the launch as a contributor. We are, and back to Savanthi's point about Fort Lauderdale, we are exploring whether we can make a lounge in Fort Lauderdale work. It's a pretty constrained airport, so we're not as sure that we have space for it. But if we can make it work and provide a great customer experience, it's certainly something we'll be talking about later in 2026.

I'll just add on Marty's comment regarding Barclays. I think what's unique about our program is we're not competing with a bank's proprietary card. This is a fully dedicated Barclays card for JetBlue. And so when you think about the depth of the relationship, and, you know, two entities really rowing in the same direction, that's very much what you see with the JetBlue card.

Okay. Great. That's really helpful. Thank you for that. And then just as a follow-up on Blue Sky, I was just kind of curious, do you see upside potential to that 75 points of RASM expansion? And then just within the various buckets, do you see the wider funnel from being on their distribution website driving a lot of the gains? Or do you see it kind of split evenly? Or Paisley? Just wondering if you could kind of break out the different drivers within Blue Sky and Paisley. Thanks again for the time.

Thanks, Tom. Honestly, all those things are important. We obviously, Paisley is very, very important. What we love the most about the Paisley upside is that first, you know, we have really built a better mousetrap with the Paisley platform. And especially important for us is that Paisley is an extremely capital-light way to grow earnings. You know, the only capital there is based on IT capital, and it's de minimis compared to our overall capital expenditure. With respect to the other substantial Paisley, I do fundamentally believe that the benefit, excuse me, to Blue Sky, I do fundamentally believe that the benefits of Blue Sky are focused in TrueBlue. As you look at the TrueBlue program, the ability to compete with the big three legacy airlines, the biggest challenge we have is that we do not have a full roster of worldwide destinations to earn and burn. And through this partnership with United, we finally plugged that hole. And I think the utility with TrueBlue points has skyrocketed in the last six months with the addition of this program. We're also relatively early along in the game, so I think it's, yeah. We'll see how that works with customers, but I love the value proposition of TrueBlue, and I very much appreciate this relationship with United to make this possible. I do also believe that the mutual distribution is gonna be important. You know, I think about places where we offer services, United doesn't. You know, JFK to the West Coast, you know, even when they do eventually enter JFK, I'm not sure where they're gonna go, but, you know, sometime in '27, they'll be in. Today, if you want to earn MileagePlus points from anywhere in New York to the West from, you know, this side of Hudson to the West Coast, we're really the only option. I love having those flights on united.com. And, you know, even though United may not have the same direct penetration that JetBlue does, it is a significantly big airline. We don't really know the traffic to their website other than what we can pull publicly, but I love the thought of all the JetBlue flights getting the eyeballs of all these United customers going to united.com all the time. And, frankly, will remind you, you know, we have a very high NPS. So I think when United customers get to fly JetBlue, the reaction is gonna be, hey. This is great. Have a great customer experience, and I can also earn my MileagePlus points. So we're really excited about that as well.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Linenberg with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey. Good morning. Just two here. Ursula, just you called out the $6.5 billion of unencumbered assets. And I just, that seems a little bit higher than maybe what you shared in the past. I thought it was more like $5 billion, and so maybe it reflects some debt paydown or maybe, you know, you reappraised, I don't know, a pool of spare engines. Did that, has that changed at all?

It did. Good catch, Mike. So the previous number that we publicly quoted was $5 billion. As we were assessing our liquidity needs for 2026, we did go through and update all of our appraisals on the unencumbered assets. So as a reminder, we purchased our aircraft deliveries last year with cash. So those were added into the pool. In addition to that, there's still incremental value on our loyalty program as well. Those were really the two main drivers of the increase. As a reminder, as we look at the unencumbered asset base, the breakdown is about 30% of their aircraft and engines. About 20% of it is loyalty, and then, obviously, the remainder is slots, gates, and routes and our brand. So, yeah, we're really pleased to continue to have this cushion. And the cushion is really a healthy culmination of assets.

Great. Thanks for that clarification. And then just, Marty, you talked about the LOPA changes with the rollout of First Class. When actually do you start selling that first First Class seat, and how long is that rollout gonna take before you get to all of your domestic flights with First Class? Thank you.

So hey, Mike. We're expecting the first airplane to roll out in the third quarter, and we're right now in the middle of certification, so we're not ready to pin the date down yet as far as when that will be. And the implementation is actually relatively quick. We'll have, you know, 20-something percent of the fleet done by the end of this year. The overwhelming majority of it will be done by '27, but not all of it, the rest comes in at '28. And the benefits, you know, it's obviously an important part of the products and perks initiative in Jet Forward. It will not be fully ramped by the end of Jet Forward. They'll be continuing to ramp in 2028. So we're really excited about it. And we'll be making more specific announcements later on this year.

Okay. Did you say 20% or 27% by year-end?

20%.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Your next question comes from the line of Catherine O'Brien with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the time. So, Marty, you know, you talked about the Fort Lauderdale capacities driving by the expected, less of a drag to the fourth quarter. Would you say that's more a function of improving overall demand? Did you see faster than expected share shift? You know, was the competitive response better than you expected? Just, you know, can you talk about how Fort Lauderdale is performing, you know, versus the system? And then higher level, like, as you're thinking about this additional capacity in the Mint ads, how do you expect that to impact the medium-term hub profitability versus system profitability in Fort Lauderdale?

Thanks, Katie. I'll say two things. First of all, we have multiple databases that help us measure share shift. The one that is the most close in, Spirit actually does not participate in. So right now, I cannot tell you if the fourth-quarter upside has been share shift or has been simulation. But when we get the DOT data, which should be coming in the next, you know, several weeks, I think we'll have a better answer for that. So I don't want to get ahead of my skis here because I don't actually have the real data. I do know that we're certainly carrying a lot more customers than we expected at higher yields than we expected. So whether it came from Spirit or from people coming off their couches, I'm happy to have it either way. With respect to profitability, we do expect Fort Lauderdale to be accretive to our overall system profitability. And frankly, I feel like with the change of the competitive environment down there, and also, you know, the ability to compete with, you know, a tough customer experience in Miami with one of our competitors. Just, you know, Fort Lauderdale is a very easy airport, it's simply located in the region. You know, we would not be doing this if we did not think that Fort Lauderdale would be a significant upside contributor to the system. Obviously, we could put airplanes anywhere. We're specifically choosing to put them in Fort Lauderdale for a reason.

Got it. Makes sense. Maybe Ursula, one for you. You mentioned you're thinking this year's financing needs will be about $500 million. How sensitive is that to your 2026 profitability outlook? I realize you're guiding to breakeven plus, not a range. But does it look different at breakeven versus above breakeven? And how does the E190 and XLR asset sales help offset fund raise requirements this year, if at all? Thanks again for the time, guys.

Yeah. Good morning, Katie. Thanks for the questions. So the first one is we're targeting what the need to be anywhere between 17% to 20% of trailing twelve months revenue. So, obviously, that excludes our revolver as well. So there's a little bit of buffer there. Just in regards to, you know, the operating performance of the business. So, you know, I will say, you know, I feel really confident based on what we know today in the team's ability to deliver on the breakeven or better operating margin. And so as we head into rates, look for the date, you know, like I said, we'll target that 17% to 20% range. We'll pivot if we have to. Obviously, we have the very healthy unencumbered asset base to choose from if we do need more liquidity. I'm pleased that I believe that we've hit peak debt levels last year, so I'm really leaning hard into the EBITDA growth driven by Jet Forward to help improve the leverage metrics. And then in regards to your cost question on fleet, last year, we had a meaningful amount of fleet transactions, the most impactful being the sale of the E190 in January. We also took advantage of some market opportunities in regards to engine sale leasebacks. As we look at 2026, we do have about a half a point of controllable cost benefit baked into the full-year guide. That's really driven by the remaining sales of the E190. So we have about eight aircraft that we will be selling in the first half of this year. And we'll continue to monitor, you know, the markets as well in terms of sale leaseback opportunities. Hope that answers your question.

Thanks so much.

Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Baker with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Oh, hey. Afternoon. So, Marty, I wanted to go back to the question you were answering before. Savanthi's question, you mentioned the rabbit. Can I just confirm there are no specific assumptions in your full-year guide as to what potentially happens with any of your competitors might be facing, shall we say, a precarious situation at the moment? Is that a correct interpretation?

Yeah. And let me give you a little more clarity on that, Jamie. There has been capacity added by some other airlines to Fort Lauderdale with the reduction of Spirit ASMs. Those ASMs are there, and they're not going away. So that growth is still there. We're not assuming that that was temporal. We're also not assuming that Spirit goes to any significant shrink versus where they are right now. I mean, our view is, okay, we want to make sure that as we give a guide, there's no sort of little secret upside in there. I mean, we've been trying to guide this thing very straight for the last two years. And we're not gonna change now. I mean, obviously, the rumors are out there. You know, I think that, you know, there's certainly probably more rumors than they have airplanes. But I don't think there's any upside for us to try to make any assumptions on that.

But I will say, Jamie, we do have multiple plans in place depending on the outcome of Spirit. So, you know, we're ready for a number of scenarios to ensure that customers are protected and that we bring the JetBlue product and the offering to more folks in South Florida and beyond.

Excellent. I appreciate that clarification, both of you. And then, you know, just round numbers. Jet Forward contribution was about $300 million last year. But total EBIT went down about $250 million year on year. So that implies simplistically that your core was down $550 million. Now last year was obviously, you know, a tumultuous one for JetBlue and the industry. Do you attribute that entire $550 million entirely to the macro? As opposed to any, you know, idiosyncratic challenges your franchise was facing?

Yep. Yep, Jamie. So I'll take that. Yeah. We attribute it entirely to the macro. And as we've looked back at 2025, we've been able to isolate out the Jet Forward initiatives and the value that they've driven. And if not for the macro, we're quite confident we would have hit our full-year operating margin guide. So we're actually very excited about '26. This is gonna be our year. If you think about the initiatives that we continue to execute in 2025, whether it was operational performance and improved NPS, our premium loyalty benefits like the JFK Lounge, you know, Even More changes, the Blue Sky partnership, and our network changes. These are all initiatives that are built to ramp over time. And as Marty mentioned, you know, these initiatives create a flywheel effect where operational reliability and NPS will enable premium growth, which will then strengthen loyalty and revenue. And then you layer in network optimization, amplifying that impact. So, you know, we really are excited that this really sets us up for continued acceleration and up in '26 as we then add things like the lounge, domestic first, and the full implementation of Blue Sky. So you know, that's behind, you know, our guide for this year. You know, last year was definitely a step back for JetBlue, but also the industry as a whole. And this team continued to execute, and we look forward to taking advantage of all that execution and more in '26.

Okay. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Take care.

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

Hi, everyone. Thank you. More rumors than aircraft, I'm gonna potentially steal that one. The bridge in the deck was interesting to me. I just, the 50 basis point macro or industry setup, I think, that you have there is, I think it feels really conservative. If you could just frame up what you assume there. Like, are you assuming that there's some sort of competitive fallout from the Chicago situation? Just any thought process on how you got there. Thank you.

No. Yeah. So, I mean, the half a point of base RASM growth is tied to the demand trends we're seeing exiting Q4 into Q1 and beyond, and then obviously, normal GDP and macro inputs. And so to the extent that there's upside, the upside would come in macro, the upside in terms of the, you know, incremental three points of RASM growth for Jet Forward, you know, it could come in things like improvements in Fort Lauderdale beyond what we've assumed, premium ramping faster, you know, sort of the flywheel effect really kicking in. So, you know, I think as you look at the guide, we guide what we see. And we do not assume any kind of snapback on macro.

I just want to add one thing, Conor. And it's something that I think as Jet Forward has progressed, we started to feel the tension between the base airline and the Jet Forward numbers because honestly, it's kind of the same thing to a certain extent. There's a lot of interaction between those two numbers. You know, when we laid out the $900 million proposal for Jet Forward, a lot of those things at other airlines would be normal course of business. So when you say, like, this is what the base airline's doing versus what Jet Forward is doing, it's getting to the point where you almost can't make those distinctions because there's so much relation between the two of them. We're very, very proud of all the initiatives, and it was a lot of change in a year. But I think that it's tougher and tougher to measure it, I think, as we go forward because the individual Jet Forward initiatives, you know, other airlines are doing them when that's in their base. So it's just a little bit tough to do that apples and apples comparison, doing RASM. Asset Jet Forward, and their RASM without any sort of branded program. But, you know, to be clear, if you think there's upside in macro, that's upside to the JetBlue plan.

Got it. Okay. Helpful. And I realize that you're not guiding including the impact of Fern, but I mean, the feedback I've gotten this morning is that it kind of derails your 1Q already. So just any thoughts, like, are the ranges wide enough to assume that you can weather, like, I mean, you canceled 1,200 flights. So just trying to understand the risk to the January outlook already given the weather events that's already happened? Thank you.

Yeah. Sure. I mean, we canceled just over 1,100 flights. We didn't cancel, you know, some of the numbers that other carriers are posting. So I think that's an important distinction, and the impact will be proportional to those cancels. So we'll definitely see some pressure on CASM. We'll see some pressure on ASMs. But this hit us, I want to be clear, during a trough. When you think about the time, it could not have come. We never ask for these things. We never want these things, but it could not have come at a better time. And so really proud that the team is executing and getting us back on track. If you see the cancellations today, you know, the number is much, much, much lower. Others still have, you know, the impact lingering. And I'm confident that as we move through the week, we'll be back up and running fully.

I would just add, Conor, like, this is, we're still gonna hit our full-year guide. I mean, this is something that obviously can be weathered within the full-year context.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Your next question comes from the line of Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Apologies if I missed this. You guys did quantify the impact of The Caribbean shutdown of airspace in January. But some of your peers have noted that the kind of warnings or the restrictions, kind of on flight activity issued a couple of weekends ago, that's had somewhat of a chilling impact on bookings and the forward curve in The Caribbean. Are you guys seeing any of that as well for the forward view?

Hey, Ravi. Good question. Thank you. We certainly saw an impact for a couple of weeks. And there's no question that it was a tough time. It was a peak day when we had the disruption. You know, it's New Year's return. So it was an incredibly poorly timed event for us. But, and we did see a couple of weeks of booking depression, but nowhere near what we heard other airlines say. I will say that our Caribbean is actually very, very diversified. You know, you think about the size of operations in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, we have a lot of markets that were not affected. Yes. We certainly saw an impact in places like Aruba, Curacao for a couple of weeks, but those have both rebounded, and we're back to normal course of business. There is a, I keep using this word divot. I'm not sure that's the right word. We still have a bit of an impact in the first quarter, but forward-looking bookings, that'll be fine. We're actually not worried about it at all.

Understood. And maybe just on the lounges, can you just share early feedback on the JFK lounge so far? Are you seeing any kind of loyalty or any measurable impact from opening that? And also, you said that you're looking at the potential for Fort Lauderdale. Is that just like a one-off given your strength there, or do you think that there's an opportunity for having, like, a network of domestic lounges over time?

Yeah. So, Ravi, we're not, we've been going on a network of lounges, but we're not there. I mean, JFK has been great, as Marty mentioned in his prepared remarks. You know, 80 plus percent NPS. We're seeing it absolutely drives sign-up for the premium card. We're excited to bring Boston online later next year. You know, as we think about Fort Lauderdale, we think it's got a great premium base that could lend itself to a lounge. We haven't announced anything yet. But we're really focused on, you know, if it makes sense for a particular market, we will evaluate it. It has to have a strong return and it has to be tied to driving our Jet Forward initiatives around the premium customer.

Yeah. Just to be clear, Ravi, the Boston lounge is this year. Yeah. Sorry. I would say, like, yeah, later this year. The number one thing we're worried about, sorry, my bad. Later. I will say one thing. As we mentioned when we announced that is we have to give the customer feedback of their hatred of lines. We do have a picture floating around of the first line outside the lounge. And it was a line of people who were signing up for instant approval of Premier cards. They wanted to get in. So it's doing exactly what we want to do, and we're really, really bullish about it. That being the case, it's a big CapEx investment. You know, we work with Barclays obviously to make sure the math works for something like this, but I think the, you know, given how our network works, which is, you know, we have a handful of cities above 30 something flights a day, this is not something we're expecting to have in 20 cities.

Understood. Good to hear. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Hey. Thanks. Good morning. Marty, your answer on Jet Forward versus core earnings a couple of questions ago is totally fair. But so you might not like the spirit of the question, but I do have a follow-up. So if I just take the guidance for this year, you're saying the bridge has $310 million of Jet Forward benefits. And I think if we're doing, like, I think that implies, like, flat core earnings. So I guess my question is, like, if base RASM's up half a point and CASM's up two, what are the offsets there that keep core earnings more flat? And what are the upside and downside risks to core earnings being flat?

Okay. I'm writing this down. I need to go through that math and try it. I wish to get back to it, I want to make sure I understand the exact question. I mean, at the core, overall industry RASM is on a very good trend right now, and that's driving a big chunk of the 2026 guide that we laid out there. And, again, back in this issue of what's core for us and what's core for the competitors, there's a lot of stuff that's in Jet Forward that will be core for our competitors. So it is very difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison. When you look at what other airlines are doing with things like, you know, how they price their extra legroom seats or how they price things like, you know, their domestic long-haul premium products. So I think that it's actually much, much tougher than you think to actually split those two things apart. I'm really focused on the top-level guide, which is the high-level guide for RASM this year. And remember, it's, you know, two to five is our range. And that's on two and a half to four and a half in ASM growth. So I think if you look at the combination of those two things, you know, we're really excited about this guide. I think it's the ability to produce that level of RASM growth with this amount of ASM, I think it's testimony to the strength of the franchise and of the positive output we're seeing from all the changes we've made in Jet Forward.

Okay. That's, I think that's fair. So your point is don't get too caught up in the individual bridge. Like, look at the whole level. Look at the big picture. ASM up. RASM up, it's working. Kind of thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, Scott. At the highest level, right, we're projected to grow our op margin by over four points. Right? Like, the majority of that is driven by Jet Forward. We are, as a company, growing again, which is fantastic. The AOG outlook has improved, and so when you take the powerful combination of the revenue initiatives, growth, the efficiency and execution on the controllable cost structure, I mean, we believe that this is a material step forward in terms of margin progression. And, you know, right now, what we're seeing in the demand environment is strong. The macro's, you know, constructive, so that's why we're, you know, super confident in being able to hit this and get on a path to sustained profitability. I mean, step number two is free cash flow and have a path to deliver positive free cash flow at the end of '27. And we'll turn to improving the health of the balance sheet. So we feel good about 2026 and our ability to execute. We're in execution mode.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate the time.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Strapolovikis with SIG. Please go ahead.

Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Ursula, if for whatever reason, there's a macro downtick, seasonal or unanticipated seat growth in New York or other markets, what are some of the levers you can pull to still get to the breakeven mark? You know, I realize that there's some or perhaps a lot of leverage here in the fleet, and areas like maintenance and fuel efficiency, but what are some of the other, I guess, cost buckets we should consider should a macro or seat growth move in an unanticipated direction? Thanks.

I'll take that. I mean, I think if you look back at 2025 and what we did in '25 when we did see that macro step back, I mean, first, we matched supply with demand in the trough period. We pulled two points of capacity, I mean, after it, and we still hit our annual cost guidance, which I think is a true testament to the team. And then we ultimately made some really hard decisions around discretionary expenses, leadership structure, and other budget cuts. So if you think about 2026, if there were a macro setback, we're gonna focus on controlling what we can. We're gonna continue to execute on Jet Forward, and then we will pull some of those levers if need be. As we move forward. Obviously, you know, capital expenditures, we would relook at that list. So this team is one that has a track record of hitting the cost targets because that is something that we control more so than obviously revenue. And so you'll continue to see us lean into that. A macro setback as we did in 2025.

Okay. And then on free cash flow, I think I heard you're targeting positive year-end '27. If you could maybe size that, so assuming you hit all your targets in Jet Forward, you move within the CapEx profile you outlined earlier. What exactly does that positive look like? Thank you.

Maybe I'll take that. We're not going out with any guide or specific numbers. But if you think as earnings grow and CapEx moderates, this is going to enable a path for JetBlue to deliver positive free cash flow and ultimately delever the balance sheet over the next couple of years. So first, we need to deliver positive operating margin in 2026. We've got a great plan to do that. That plan takes advantage of everything we built this year and then all the additional initiatives that are layering on in '26. And then that should hopefully, as we think about exiting '26, allow us to generate free cash flow by 2027 and then ultimately beyond that, restoring our balance sheet health in 2028 and beyond.

Okay. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Brandon Oglenski with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Joanna, maybe to follow-up on that, I mean, I know it's been a difficult couple of years here. I've been targeting breakeven for a while and there's been some macro setbacks for sure. But how do you think about longer-term profitability at JetBlue once you get to free cash flow and things like that and delevering? Can you get back to, you know, ROIC in excess of your cost of capital? Or do you see fundamentally there's issues of scale here that, you know, a lot of airline CEOs will talk about just given how important rewards programs have become?

Yeah. No. We absolutely see a path back. This is all about improving our operating margin. When you think about scale, I mean, there's two ways to look at it. One is scale within the market that you're in. And we continue as we're growing this year again in Fort Lauderdale, but we continue to focus on trying to ensure that we have strong franchises in our core geographies. And then the Blue Sky partner is really designed to provide scale to our loyalty program and scale beyond JetBlue for our customers. And so, you know, that's our approach. And I think, you know, we look at the initiatives we're delivering, the fact that customers are coming back to us because we've improved operational performance in NPS. We've got a whole series of initiatives we executed last year that are fully in ramp this year and then layering on our first-class product, bringing Blue Sky further to life, and then, obviously, domestic first. So we're really bullish about the next few years who will absolutely get us back on a path and delivering, you know, more than positive free cash flow restoring the balance sheet in the longer term. And taking it one year at a time, the last year was a pretty big challenge for the industry, and so we're being cautious about how we step into this year with a guide that we think is very achievable given the initiatives we have laid out for the plan, and looking forward to hitting that breakeven number this year.

And I know it's been a long call, but, Ursula, you brought up AOG and the GTF issues, which I think is impacting you less now. Can you talk through the financial impact there in '26 and maybe any recourse you're getting from Pratt?

Sure. Yeah. So we're pleased that the AOG situation has improved year over year. So we had nine aircraft on the ground last year, and we're expecting mid-single digits this year. It did take over the last few weeks a slight step backward. We thought we would be in low single-digit land in terms of aircraft on the ground this year. We got a recent update from Pratt & Whitney, they continue to struggle on the A321 fleet type with supply chain and shop capacity. So we're now getting through it. It clearly continues to be a dynamic environment for the A320 fleet type. We are still working through with Pratt & Whitney the compensation. We're focused on getting what we believe we deserve. Given we're such a large customer of Pratt, there could be many forms in which compensation comes through. And in light of, you know, accounting treatment, while the settlement is important to us, you know, the amount is not meaningful to whether or not we achieve our full-year guidance for 2026. But in the end, you know, improvement year over year, allowing us to grow again, we're pleased.

Thank you.

And that concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn it over to Joanna Geraghty for closing remarks.

Great. Thanks so much. I appreciate all the questions. As you can tell, this group is very excited to deliver on breakeven or better operating margin this year, underpinned by what we see as a strengthening macro backdrop, returning to growth. I have to emphasize that, very excited about that. Constructive capacity backdrop and then all of the Forward initiatives really coming into a really nice place for 2026 and beyond. So thanks for the call today, and then I'll just end with, congrats to the New England Patriots as the official airline sponsor of the Pats. This is your year too. Thanks.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's call. Thank you all for joining, and you may now disconnect.