Well, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Citi's Industrials, Tech, and Mobility Conference. I'm Steve Trent. I am the Americas Airlines and Latin transports analyst. We're delighted today to have, JetBlue with us. CFO, Ursula Hurley a nd VP of Revenue Planning, Dave Clark. My legal disclosures. They are available, and I can shoot them off to you. Perfect. Well, welcome, Jonathan. As I've never met either of you in person. I'm gonna plead the Fifth on that mistake, but welcome, Jonathan.
Thank you very much for having me.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, so to kick it off today, as you pivot over towards a more organic, long-term growth strategy, you know, could you mention and give us a little color on how you're prioritizing the steps you're taking to achieve your long-term goals?
Yeah. So first off, thank you, Stephen and the Citi team for hosting us here in Miami. It's nice to be here in mid-February. So thank you for having us. We've had a great morning with various investors. Really excited to be here this afternoon. Our number one priority is getting this business back to sustained profitability, and some of the ways in which we're gonna do that is really honing in on our strengths. So we have a very distinct brand, we have coveted geography that is constrained, and we have a product offering that customers, specifically leisure customers, very much value, and so we're gonna capitalize on these opportunities. So what does that mean? It means a few things. First and foremost, we're moving swiftly to action.
One of the things you've been seeing us do over the last handful of weeks is continue to hone in on evolving the network strategy and doubling down and building depth in places like Boston and New York. We have an increased level of sensitivity around routes driving profitability, and so we're making changes and adjustments to the network to ensure that we're flying to places that the leisure customer wants to go, and also pivoting if something isn't working. So definitely taking action in general on the network side. Number two, New York continues to recover, so it's been slow to recover coming out of COVID.
However, we continue to see improvement in New York's performance every quarter, and so this is going to continue to be a tailwind for JetBlue going forward. The third area that we're honing in on is: How do we continue to evolve the product offering to the leisure customer? And so ensuring that we're capturing value from customers who are willing to pay a little bit more for an enhanced experience. And so, we've done really well in driving Mint product top-line revenue, as well as our Even More Space cabin has been performing very, very well, and so that's gonna be an area we've communicated. There's $300 million in revenue initiatives.
Two-thirds of that is ancillary revenue that we've baked into the plan this year, and we're pleased with progress thus far. Moving down the P&L statement, the next area is really continuing to double down on our structural cost programs. We are going through a fleet revitalization program, replacing the E190s with the A220s, and we've also been attacking our fixed cost base. And so all of this is really underpinned by continuing to focus on operational reliability as well. So these are really the components and the inputs that we're focused on in order to drive us to sustained profitability and, quite frankly, deliver value for our owners.
No, that's great color. Really appreciate that. And, you know, you mentioned on your recent earnings call, you know, these various revenue initiatives, and I'm wondering if you could maybe touch on those a little bit. You know, whether it's sort of bag revenue, co-branded card, and sort of what's happening there?
So certainly, we did talk about $300 million in revenue initiatives tied up in about 15 or so different initiatives. And as Urs pointed out, roughly $200 million of that tied up with ancillary revenue streams. But realistically, I look at it as four major pillars. So ancillary is certainly the biggest, but it's, it's four pillars, right? The first pillar is really an increased distribution and partnership framework, working with the right strategic partners, whether it be TMCs, OTAs, and other distributors, to make sure to get our product out there, bring the goods and services, and the experience that our customers want to more people. Being on the shelf and providing content where people can purchase and get our things out there to more customers every day.
Number two, you mentioned co-brand card, but loyalty, enhanced loyalty offerings would be pillar number two, building upon the great launch of our TrueBlue 3.0 program last year. New ways for customers to earn status, more high-tier offerings, and more ways to use your TrueBlue points going forward. So that would be the second area. The third area, Urs also hit upon, which is network optimization, right? We do not have large amount of ASM growth this year. In fact, we're actually,
Our ASM profile is gonna be down low single digits for the year, but it's about having the aircraft flying to the right places, focusing on our core leisure geographies, Boston, New York, core high-end leisure geographies, including Florida and Latin, and making sure we get our flying optimized to take capacity out of the areas that we're not providing good margins to the P&L and putting them into more profitable areas. And then the last piece, as you mentioned, the big one, the $200 million one, is the ancillary revenue streams, and you mentioned bags, you mentioned seats. Seats is a big part of it, right? Urs talked about EMS and premium product offering, right? EMS has done phenomenally. We see our EMS RASM growing double digits. We're really excited about continuing to optimize how we can monetize our EMS cabin.
Preferred seating is a good case in point and something we just launched last month, right? We launched preferred seating. We've seen customers willing to buy up for an upgraded experience, right? So we are now monetizing the most desirable seats and real estate on the aircraft, windows, aisles, front of the aircraft, and it has already started to exceed our expectations in its first month. So, we're really excited about all these initiatives. We're excited to share more details at upcoming Investor Day. But, you know, four great pillars, and we think it's gonna drive great returns this year.
No, fantastic. Really appreciate the color. You know, I look at you guys, and it's fascinating. I remember you guys in the 1990s, I thought of as more of a, kind of a traditional low-cost carrier, you know, flying into Long Beach and not LAX, you know, one fleet type. As you've gone through the years, then you added Embraers, then you added Mint, you know, now you fly transatlantic, so it's been an intriguing transformation. You know, and as you take these new steps, for example, you know, what are the key, some of your key takeaways, that you've learned as you've added a new product or pivoted in terms of, you know, from a business model perspective?
Yeah, so we actually just celebrated JetBlue's 24th birthday. So to your point, we have continued to evolve the product offering, but what's always been core to JetBlue is serving the leisure customer, and that continues to withstand all of the evolutions that we have gone through. And we, over time, have strived to continue to compete for that leisure customer. So I think of back in 2014, we were not competitive flying East Coast to West Coast, and we had a decision to make. You either exit the market, or you create a product that can compete and be successful on that transcon route. And so that's really how Mint evolved, and now we're very proud of what Mint has actually been able to deliver.
It has made us a fierce, fierce competitor on transcon, and that product is actually what allowed us to grow in Europe. And so our European strategy is really based on where our current customers in New York and Boston want to go, and we continue to evolve and upgrade that Mint product and that offering. And so fundamentally, what we've done over time is continue to evolve the spectrum of offerings to the leisure customer that we have. So we have our Blue Basic fare, which is for the uber price-sensitive customer, and then on the other end of the spectrum, we have Mint, which is our business class product. And we have things in between, right? And I think what we've seen coming out of COVID is, people will pay more for an elevated experience.
And so how do we continue to capture that value, whether it's EMS or Mint or a play in between both of those? So, those are really the lessons learned; our strength is leisure, and we're gonna continue to evolve the product offering and the experience to continue to own that market. Because we've got really, really attractive real estate in New York and Boston, and so being the carrier for those leisure customer types is the priority, and that's what we're gonna continue to double down on.
Oh, fantastic. Really appreciate that color, Ursula. You know, and when we look at JetBlue on a long-term basis, let's say from, you know, an ESG perspective, you know, how do you feel about the composition of JetBlue's board. You know, you're one of these unique airlines on several levels, having a CEO and CFO helm two women, which is terrific. You know, and I'm just, on a high level, I'd love to hear how you're thinking about what's the game plan for the rest of the company from, you know, from that perspective?
Yeah, it's a good question. So very excited to have Joanna Geraghty appointed our CEO, the first woman CEO of a U.S. airline, so very excited for her and the team going forward. ESG has always been at the core of what JetBlue is all about, and as we look at the composition of the board, that's always been a priority and will continue to be a priority. So at the moment, we have a board of 11, and 4 of those individuals on the board are women, and then 50% of our board is either a woman or someone of a different race.
So, we value that because it's bringing different people with different backgrounds to the table to challenge us. The other thing I would touch upon, which we haven't addressed yet, is obviously we're going to have an evolution to our board based on what transpired over the last week and a half. So, as hopefully most of you saw, Carl Icahn has invested in JetBlue, so he owns 9.91% of the company, and we came to an agreement with Carl and his team last week to put two members on our board from Carl Icahn Enterprises. So they will join us in an advisory capacity next Monday, and then they will formally join the board as directors at the May shareholder meeting. Again, excited to have a different perspective on the board. They will hold now two of the 13 seats on our board.
Oh, fantastic. A question I got from a client pertains to your investment strategy going forward. Longer term, you have some members of the group looking at eVTOL investments. You have other airlines looking at, you know, supersonic aircraft investments. And then in some other cases, you have some of your competitors taking minority stakes in overseas airlines. You know, when you think about that potential long-term mosaic, and I know your board is undergoing some changes now and what you might invest in, but any high-level views on any one of these opportunities that might look attractive on a long-term basis?
Yeah, I mean, listen, ultimately, the number one priority at this moment is getting the business to sustain profitability. And we need the business to generate free cash flow to fund our go-forward order book. So we actually recently did an aircraft deferral to push some aircraft out to the right to put us on a more sustainable path. So we'll take, on average, 25 aircraft over each of the next four to five years. So we believe that that set us up to put us on a path to profitability, to deliver free cash flow, so that, quite frankly, the number one priority is improving the balance sheet post-COVID.
So free cash flow generation, I would prioritize first and foremost to starting to de-lever, because our debt levels have become much higher than they were pre-COVID. So balance sheet management and improvement is definitely a priority. I think second, making sure that the airline's actually growing is another priority. We're in a unique situation this year, where we're unfortunately not growing because of the constraints that we have on the GTF engine. And so, once we get to sustained profitability, ensuring that we invest capital in order to grow the fleet and provide us some scalability. So that will definitely be a priority.
In addition to that, I will remind everyone, we have a subsidiary out in Silicon Valley called JetBlue Tech Ventures, and the whole mission of that JV is to invest in startup opportunities that are gonna basically disrupt the travel industry. And so we make investments in startup organizations, Joby being one of them. You mentioned eVTOL. They were a super successful investment that we made, and so we're excited to see where that space continues to evolve. So we're definitely a part of that space, and we'll continue to make investments that hopefully will pay off, but will also enhance the travel experience.
Oh, super, Ursula. Very interesting, and by the way, if anybody has any questions you want to ask, Ursula or John, you know, please don't be shy. In terms of, you know, maybe jumping back a little bit to sort of ESG-type questions anyway, fuel hedging. You know, 2022 was kind of a wild year for New York Harbor grade jet fuel crack spreads with all the stuff going on in Eastern Europe. You know, how have these experiences and these pressures led you to kind of double down or rethink your longer-term jet fuel hedging strategy?
Yeah, so we, we are a, a hedger. We, we view fuel hedging on a discretionary basis as a level of insurance or protection against extreme spikes in, in oil. So we are constantly monitoring the market and entering hedges that we believe will be cost-effective. So at, at the moment, we are hedged directly in jet fuel, so that protects us from any spikes that, that we see in crack spreads or Brent. So we, for the first quarter, are, are 30% hedged, and for full year 2024, we are 13% hedged. So you will continue to see us layer on different levels of, of hedges in, in a price-effective manner because we, we do view it as a way to mitigate some risk.
Obviously, some of our peers hedge much more, and some of our peers don't hedge at all. So I view us as right in the middle, just to give us a certain level of protection. But yes, oil has been exceptionally volatile over the last few weeks. And so we're also very thoughtful about how much we actually consume, and so honing in on operational opportunities to reduce fuel burn, whether that's single-engine taxi or whether that's connecting the aircraft as quickly as we can to ground power when it pulls up to the gate. So we're being very thoughtful when we track those operational initiatives very closely to ensure that we're driving down consumption where we can as well.
Oh, super. Really appreciate that, Ursula. You know, some of your competitors have also kind of telegraphed that they are doing a lot more sales via the direct channel route. And traditionally, let's say pre-pandemic, let's say the network carriers were doing a lower level of sales from that. You know, how has that evolved for JetBlue now, relative to before the start of the pandemic, and how do you see that evolving going forward?
Sure. So, you know, clearly the distribution strategies of the legacies, a little different than what we've seen at JetBlue, and we see them making a push more towards the direct sales, as you noted. I think we've been in a fortunate position. I'm a big proponent of direct sales. I mean, it's a great channel. It's a very effective cost channel, low cost. You have direct access to the customer, in terms of communication and servicing, and you also have the ability to monetize your products and services the way you want to do it when you display the product to the customer. Thankfully, JetBlue has always been a very highly sold, direct distribution airline. We were pre-pandemic, we continue to be so post-pandemic. We see our level of direct distribution to remain exceedingly high.
It's been very stable, and we expect it to remain that way. That said, right, I talked about the pillars earlier. Like, for us, we see great value in diversifying our distribution and making sure that we work with the strategic partners to get our product out to more customers. I mentioned, you know, GDS and OTA. I mean, these are channels that we see as bringing positive contribution to our bottom line, and as we make this strong push towards profitability, we believe the diversified portfolio will actually help us step forward, building upon that base of very, very strong direct distribution, which we don't expect to go anywhere, anytime soon.
Oh, great color, Jonathan. Really appreciate that. Another question I've gotten from investors, when one looks at, you know, JetBlue's avenues for, let's say, non-organic growth or slash partnerships, for example, you know, the antitrust overlay is kind of significant. You know, you... Of course, the courts wouldn't allow the Northeast Alliance to continue, but would JetBlue ever see any value, for example, in joining a global alliance? Is that something that you guys think could be interesting medium to longer term and with respect to enhancing your global capillarity?
Yeah. So, I'll start, and then Jonathan can add. So, I'm sure you're all aware, we've tried very hard over the last few years to gain scale in this industry, and the government has not been our friend, not just once, but twice, which is unfortunate. So what we're focused on is deepening and leveraging our strengths today to continue to grow at our own pace. Historically, we have always had a significant amount of partnerships. I think the great benefit of JetBlue's geography is we have the corner lot at JFK, and we have a rather large presence in Boston.
And so being able to carry our customers to certain destinations, but then allow them to get even farther than the JetBlue network, places like Doha or South Africa, we have a plethora of different partners that we have in the portfolio today that help connect customers to exactly where they want to go. So that's been the strategy that we've taken versus joining, you know, an overarching JV or global, more global partnership.
Obviously, given the verdict on Spirit, this is definitely an area that I think we'll continue to explore, just how do we better leverage our footprint and how do we continue to feed, you know, incremental customers into the system? Something else that we've been enhancing is our loyalty program and the ability to use our loyalty program points across different carriers. That has been something that we've been rolling out throughout this year. And so again, the key here is giving the JetBlue customer base just more options to get wherever they want to go in the world.
Oh, super! Definitely appreciate that. And when we think about international travel, for example, just another question about southbound. Some of your counterparts have mentioned overcapacity, for example, into Mexico's beach destinations. I believe you guys are gonna soon start serving that Tulum International Airport in Quintana Roo. And I'm just sort of wondering what you're seeing on this corridor and what you're seeing more broadly in the Caribbean markets you serve.
Sure. I'm first of all really excited to serve Tulum and, you know, it's a great destination. As we've talked about this entire time, you know, our core leisure customer and our high-end premium leisure customer, I mean, these are destinations they want to travel. This is our bread and butter, you know, so we're excited about adding capacity to the region. Our Cancun services do exceptionally well. It is a slot-constrained airport, and to be able to fly to Tulum and give more options to our customers to that region is something we're really, really excited about.
I mean, just thinking in general about the Caribbean region and, you know, the leisure destinations, these are strong routes for us. The demand is robust. There are some capacity headwinds in Latin. You know, coming out of COVID, a lot of carriers pumped a lot of capacity into these regions. We're starting to see that normalize now, but it's gonna continue to remain a focus of ours because it returns great investment to our bottom line, and it's where our customers want to fly. Very excited. Really looking forward to Tulum.
No, super, really appreciate that. And when we look at your aircraft and your equipment, could you maybe give us a little bit of more color on exactly where you are with the geared turbofan engine, you know, challenges, this powder metal alloy contamination that's creating aircraft grounding, sort of? How is that really affecting you, and you know, how should we think about that over the next two years?
Yeah, no. It's one of the biggest challenges we're facing at the moment, is having a significant amount of aircraft on the ground due to Powder Metal, as well as reliability challenges. We continue to work closely with Pratt & Whitney on these challenges. So in 2024, we'll have, on average, 11 aircraft out of service at any point in time. We will peak between, like, 12-15 aircraft in the third quarter of this year, which is really meaningful, right? Like, this is adding up to, you know, close to 3.5 points capacity, which is one of the main reasons that JetBlue is not growing this year. Historically, we've grown mid to high single digits, and we're unfortunately not growing this year.
In regards to 2025, I think 2025 for JetBlue will continue to be challenged with the GTF. I don't necessarily believe that the situation will improve. And we're working hand in hand with Pratt to give folks like yourselves more color on what that actually means in terms of 2025 growth rate. One lever that we are assessing and hopefully executing is we had about 30 A320 aircraft that were set to retire over the next 4-5 years, and we're most likely gonna end up keeping those in the fleet longer.
So that will take a certain level of investment, but I believe that that's a capital-light way to add capacity back into the system because we do believe that we need to grow. There's only so deep that you can cut in terms of your fixed cost base, and so growth is gonna be very important to us. And so this is definitely a capital-light way to extend some of these older aircraft that aren't as exposed to powder metal as the new aircraft technology. So, that is a lever that we're exploring to backfill some of the GTF capacity that we've lost.
Oh, okay.
Is there a question in the crowd?
Please, go ahead, Jason.
I guess two, maybe three short questions. One would be
Wow, three!
Uh, yeah.
You got three of them all.
All related to the same thing. One topic, three parts.
Okay.
So on the GTF, what has Pratt told you all about the length of time that, you know, each individual aircraft will have to be, you know, on the ground, from kind of start to getting it back to you all? I know you've mentioned some, you know, 11, 12 aircraft on average throughout 2024. Sounds like a similar number in 2025, but I am just kind of curious on start and end.
Sure. So right now, we're planning, based on Pratt's guidance, we're planning on having each aircraft out of service for about 360-365 days. So it's right now about a year. I think based on when the powder metal issue came about last year, we haven't hit that one-year mark yet. So I think in the back half of this year will be an inflection point to say, "Oh, yes, that estimated time on the ground is accurate," or is it going to extend beyond that 360-365 days?
Right. And so when did you have your first AOG related to this?
When did we have our first AOG? I want to say 2022. I mean, we've had. I mean, just to put it in perspective, Powder Metal
Yeah
It is the major issue that has been discussed over the last, I would say, 8 months or so. But since we introduced the GTF engine, there has been reliability challenges, right? Certain parts in the engine aren't lasting as long as we originally intended, and so from a reliability perspective, we've had challenges over the last few years.
Okay. As far as compensation back to you all for these AOGs, what’s the approach you’re taking on this? How do we calculate that out?
Yeah, thus far, we've taken the approach where we deal with one year at a time. So, in our 2023 results, we did bake in a reduction to our maintenance expense, driven by compensation that we received from Pratt. We have not yet settled on 2024 compensation. There is an assumption baked into our full year guide based on the average out of service being the 11 shells.
Okay, and then, I heard you mention earlier you're buying A220s
Yes
As well? Okay. Just kind of curious what these kinds of, what's the word I'm looking for? Events, how they inform your fleet planning decisions and, you know, and which OEM you choose to, and an engine provider you decide to work with in the future. Does that change your mind or-
Yeah, listen
Reiterate what you have?
This is the age-old debate about sole provider or not-
Yeah
Sole provider. So we are, we are a sole, customer of Airbus and Pratt & Whitney at the moment. I definitely think that going forward, when we do make fleet decisions, we'll obviously always revisit that sole provider or not. What are the benefits, of doing that, versus not? I mean, a, a lot of the OEMs in the sector right now are having various challenges, right? So, even if we weren't with Airbus or Pratt, we could be exposed, to some of the other challenges that have occurred. So it will definitely play a role in the decision-making process, going forward, when we talk about sole provider. Over the next, four-plus years, our order book is pretty sound at the moment.
It's 25 aircraft coming from Airbus per year, and they will have Pratt engines on them. I mean, one of the reasons we actually announced an aircraft deferral in January was to push some of these aircraft out to the right, because it's really painful to pay such a significant amount of money for these brand-new aircraft and then have them sit on the ground. So that was also one of the reasons that we pushed stuff to the right and are really gonna double down on some of these older classic aircraft that aren't exposed to the extent of the problems of the new technology.
Okay, great. I appreciate you
Yes
Taking the time. Oh, thank you for the questions.
You know, and as a follow-up to that, I know you guys have, have, you mentioned, pushed stuff to the right, deferred some fleet through 2027, I believe. When you think about longer-term aircraft financing, you know, what are your sort of high-level thoughts with respect to, "Let's buy planes, let's lease them, let's do sale leasebacks," you know, or, or, or some mix of the above? You know, what works best for JetBlue?
Yeah. So we historically have preferred just outright ownership of aircraft versus leasing them. You know, we intend to fly aircraft 20, 25, 30-plus years, and the cost of ownership over that timeframe has always been benefited if you outright own it versus leasing. As we were navigating through COVID, we did take advantage of the sale-leaseback market. We structured some leases to sunset aircraft into retirement, and we found that to be a very successful strategy. You know, over the last 18 months, we've had a great amount of success doing finance leases.
And so we like finance leases because the all-in cost of funding is attractive, and we also have been successful in building in some prepayment flexibility. I mean, that's really important because we do have aspirations to improve the balance sheet and the amount of debt on the balance sheet, and so building in prepayment flexibility is really important to us. So, so I think high level, you know, outright ownership, we'll continue to look at the the finance lease market. We've historically tapped the capital markets and done WTCs and term loans.
I, I think what's also really important to note, we have $10 billion of unencumbered collateral at the moment, and more than half of that is our TrueBlue loyalty program. So we still have that unencumbered. And so I mention this because we have a bunch of different assets, and so we have the ability to assess what market is gonna deliver the best economics for us in terms of financing needs, going forward. So we'll raise about $1.6 billion in debt this year. We've locked in $600 million to date, and we're out there in the market, as we speak, engaging with parties to hopefully finance the rest of that, for 2024.
Oh, fantastic, Ursula. Thanks. Great, great color. When we think about demand, and when we think about passenger flow today, you know, what are your views as to demand indicators and ticket demand today versus pre-pandemic? Whether you've seen sort of what you'd view as cyclical changes to ticket purchase patterns or maybe some structural changes, you know, now that many people are no longer Monday through Friday in their offices.
So there have been some changes, you know, cyclically, I mean, structurally, to demand patterns. But we're back to a pre-
Pretty normalized environment, not 100% there yet. And first of all, I think the most important thing when you talk about demand is just that it's healthy right now, right? You know, that is the first thing that matters to me. I look at our Q1 numbers, you know, the demand environment is healthy. We're delivering to our expectations. We see stronger bookings now close in. We're seeing strength in month that have exceeded our expectations in, compared to recent quarters. So that really, really bodes well from a demand environment. That also means that the shape of the booking curve and the amount of traffic that you're taking close in is more normalizing to what we saw pre-COVID versus, you know, coming right out of COVID, we saw a much more elongated and more pronounced demand environment further back. So that's somewhat normalizing.
What's definitely pronounced as different is the strength in that premium leisure marketplace. You know, what we talked about, people paying and upgrading for a premium experience, and we've talked a lot in the last roughly half hour about the strength in premium leisure and our leisure core customer. We talked about EMS, we talked about Mint, but, you know, we're doubling down on that as well, right, when we see these trends. And if you think about EMS, we talked about the A220 just now.
The A220 is gonna come into our fleet. It's going to have 90% more EMS seats per shell than what we have on the Embraer E190. And what's not coming in as a A220 this year, we're taking 7 deliveries, A321neos. Each and every one of those A321neos will have our award-winning, state-of-the-art, suite, all aisle access Mint product, which has gotten rave reviews over the transatlantic. So we're seeing this as evolving trends, and we're actioning things right now and very quickly to make sure that we can capitalize on the trends we've seen.
Oh, great color, and I'll tell you, I have not flown Mint transatlantic. I've definitely flown a transcon.
Come on!
Oh, you guys just recently started that. I have flown the Mint transcon. That is a great product.
Yes.
Speaking of the transatlantic, I'm curious, you know, your high-level takeaways in terms of, you know, maybe what's turned out to be much stronger on that corridor than you've expected. You know, maybe what are some things that have surprised you as, you know, you guys are now flying across the pond and launching service to more destinations?
I mean, the response to Mint has been phenomenal. I wouldn't call it surprising, 'cause we know the product is exceptional. But that's really ramped very quickly. The feedback from customers is phenomenal, and we just see that product really maturing across the Atlantic, so we've certainly seen that. You know, we were fortunate to see a very strong Atlantic environment last summer. Unfortunately, it's a small portion of our network, but we've learned, right? You do it right, and you fly to the right places, it can be a very good part of your network, and so thus, we are growing.
This summer we'll have roughly 13 flights a day across the Atlantic. We're adding Boston to Paris. We're increasing our JFK to Paris footprint. You know, we've learned that seasonally, the summer is strong, so what are we doing? We're putting in seasonal service to Dublin and Edinburgh on our 321 aircraft. So, we've learned that there's a strong market out there. There's a strong demand for our premium product, and, we're putting more flights out there to enable us to capitalize on that.
Oh, fantastic. And, and on a related note, you know, the mentioning the A220, you know, you look at the network majors, they've really pulled away a lot, they and their regional counterparts have pulled away a lot of service to, sort of lower gauge domestic destinations. You know, as the A220 fleet for JetBlue starts to spool up, you know, do you see any opportunities to maybe take some share on, on some of the lower gauge domestic markets, or is this something that's less interesting for you?
Yeah, of course. I think the A220 is obviously replacing the E190. And so, you know, you will see the 220 doing Boston, LaGuardia. You will also see the 220 heading out west as well. Part of the big reason that we actually chose the A220 versus the E2 is that the capabilities are that much greater. So in terms of range, in terms of customer experience, and just the overarching economics on a per seat basis are over 30% more beneficial compared to the E190s.
So we view this aircraft as a game changer compared to how we're currently operating it. So to answer your question, you know, it will be doing short haul. It will also be doing medium and some long haul out west as well. So we've been pleased with the performance, and the customer NPS is really strong on the aircraft as well. So looking forward to having all of the E190s retired next year and replaced by the 220.
Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, look, we are just about out of time, and I want to keep everybody on their schedules and be respectful of people's times, but definitely wanted to thank Jonathan and Ursula today for the insights, and then Kush in the room as well. Thank you very much, guys, for coming and for your insights.
Thank you, Stephen.
Thank you, Stephen.
Have a good day.