Good morning. My name is Lee, your operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the JetBlue Airways first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. I'll now like to turn the call over to JetBlue's Director of Investor Relations, Joe Caiado. Please go ahead, sir.
Thanks, Lee. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our first quarter 2022 earnings call. This morning we issued our earnings release and a presentation that we'll reference during this call. All of those documents are available on our website at investor.jetblue.com and have been filed with the SEC. In New York to discuss our results are Robin Hayes, our Chief Executive Officer, Joanna Geraghty, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Ursula Hurley, our Chief Financial Officer. Also joining us for Q&A are Dave Clark, Head of Revenue and Planning, and Andres Barry, President of JetBlue Travel Products. This morning's call includes forward-looking statements about future events. All such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially.
Please refer to our most recent earnings release and our most recent Form 10-Q or 10-K for a more detailed discussion of the risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our forward-looking statements, including, among others, the COVID-19 pandemic, fuel availability and pricing, the outcome of the lawsuit filed by the DOJ related to our Northeast Alliance, and the outcome of any discussions between JetBlue and Spirit Airlines with respect to a possible transaction, including the possibility that the parties will not agree to pursue a business combination transaction, the conditions to the completion of the possible transaction and the possibility that JetBlue may be unable to achieve synergies and operating efficiencies within the expected time frames or at all, and to successfully integrate Spirit's operations with those of JetBlue.
The statements made during this call are made only as of the date of the call, and we undertake no obligation to update the information. Investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Also, during the course of our call, we may discuss several non-GAAP financial measures. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to GAAP measures, please refer to the tables at the end of our earnings release, a copy of which is available on our website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Robin Hayes, JetBlue's CEO.
Thanks, Joe. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to begin on slide five of our earnings presentation. I'll start by thanking our more than 23,000 crew members for their continued dedication to caring for our customers and their unwavering focus on running a safe operation, even as we've worked through recent challenges. We realize these difficulties have an impact on our customers and crew members, and we know that we haven't lived up to their expectations in recent weeks. We are taking swift and significant action to get the operation back on track in the near term and deliver the JetBlue experience that our customers love and expect, while not losing sight of our longer term strategic initiatives.
As you will see in our updated guidance, these actions will have a short term impact on margin, but it's the right thing to do to build the confidence of our customers and crew members and set ourselves up for success as we look to maintain our revenue and cost momentum beyond the summer. Our first quarter results were characterized by very strong demand acceleration, with revenue coming in more than 6 points ahead of our initial view in January. We delivered positive year-over-year revenue growth in the month of March as we exited the quarter with tremendous revenue momentum, driven by very strong underlying travel demand across all of our core segments. Unfortunately, a confluence of events resulted in a temporary operational setback here in April that has significantly impacted our second quarter outlook.
As you will recall, last month at an investor conference, we discussed our plans to moderate our capacity plan for the year in light of rising fuel prices and building more operational resilience. We continue to experience elevated levels of pilot attrition and training pressures. This was further compounded by unprecedented levels of weather and ATC disruption in April, resulting in a 90% completion factor, 9 points lower than our historical average. To help restore our operational reliability, we are reducing our capacity growth even further as we plan more conservatively for the summer and make investments to de-risk the operation. These actions will create more resiliency in the operation and set us up for better May and an even better June and strong summer peak.
While our return to profitability has likely been pushed out by a quarter, we're confident that this reset puts us on the right path. Before we get into the results for the quarter, I'd like to make a brief comment regarding our proposal to acquire Spirit. We're very pleased by the determination of the Spirit board that our offer could reasonably likely to lead to a superior proposal in recognition of the compelling value for all stakeholders that JetBlue has offered. We will respect the confidential nature of the process as we engage with Spirit under the terms of their current merger agreement with Frontier and have nothing further to add on this topic beyond what we outlined in our conference call a few weeks ago.
Please keep in mind that the outlook and forecast that we discuss on this call have been prepared without taking into account or consideration a possible transaction with Spirit. We remain focused on the operation as we look to capitalize on the very robust demand environment ahead of us, while continuing to execute on our strategic initiatives so that we are well-positioned to return to profitability in the back half of the year and deliver value for our owners, customers, crew members, and communities over the long term. Now let's turn to our quarterly results, starting on slide six. For the first quarter, we reported an adjusted loss per share of $0.80. We experienced a remarkable V-shaped recovery following the Omicron wave, hitting a new daily sales record along the way.
This demand momentum positions us incredibly well to recapture the recent run-up in fuel prices, and we're excited for the strong summer travel period ahead of us. As we strive to provide the high quality of service that our customers have come to expect from us, we're taking proactive measures to invest in and improve our operational performance, as Joanna will discuss. We're also maintaining our summer hiring pace despite the reduced capacity outlook. In partnership with New York Mayor Eric Adams, we hosted over 1,200 candidates at our hugely successful JFK hiring event last month as we work together to revitalize our hometown's economies and vibrant tourism industry. All of this is reflected in our second quarter and revised full-year outlook. Moving to slide seven. Despite the current operating and fuel environment, we're seeing underlying momentum of our path to transforming JetBlue's structural profitability.
We are making great progress on many of our longer-term initiatives in 2022, and these will be meaningful drivers of our earnings growth in coming years. Our ability to grow in high-value geographies, bringing more value to customers, and promote competition would not be possible without the Northeast Alliance with American Airlines. We are now operating more flights out of the New York metro area today than ever before, with plans to increase service up to 300 flights per day. This compares to an average of roughly 200 flights per day pre-pandemic. In the process, we are creating 5,000 high-quality jobs in our hometown of New York to support this growth.
I will note that given what we have experienced here in April, our intention is to treat the ramp-up to 300 flights per day in New York very conservatively and to ensure we have more capacity to recover quickly from weather events. I'm also pleased with the strong execution of our ancillary revenue strategy, which continues to provide customers with additional value and choice while driving strong unit revenue performance. On the loyalty front, the team continues to enhance the value proposition for our award-winning TrueBlue program by adding earning and redemption opportunities for our customers. Last, but certainly not least, I'm always impressed by our JetBlue Travel Products team as they doubled their revenue growth in Q1 compared with the first quarter of 2019. The business is scaling very nicely and remains on track to hit $100 million in one-way EBIT contribution this year.
Notwithstanding some of the short-term investments we have outlined here, our business model thrives when we keep costs low, which is the other key lever to restoring our profitability. The volatile fuel environment and the investments we are making in our operations only serves to highlight the urgency with which we need to manage our controllable costs and drive productivity. Having said that, it's important to note that the operational disruption in April really masks the underlying progress we are seeing in our CASM ex-fuel performance in Q2, which is actually trending in the right direction after adjusting for the short-term headwinds, as Ursula will discuss further shortly.
In the first quarter, we exercised and accelerated 30 A220 options to support the exit of our E190 fleet by 2026, and our fleet modernization program is key to driving a more efficient cost structure while also supporting JetBlue's path towards net zero. Given our reduced capacity outlook, we are also exploring the potential to further accelerate the retirement of some of our older aircraft. We're looking forward to sharing more detail with you at our Investor Day next month on all of the work our team is doing to position JetBlue for success as we look to strengthen our earnings power in the coming years and deliver value for our owners. Turning to slide eight. The work is never done on ensuring our long-term sustainability, and we recently announced another deal for SAF supply with Neste.
As part of our objective to be at the forefront of innovation and help decarbonize aviation, our JetBlue Tech Ventures subsidiary has made further investments in two additional startups. Electric Power Systems is a leading provider of aerospace battery systems, and Air Company is working on carbon capture and conversion technology. We've also invested in the TPG Rise Climate Fund as a limited partner, focusing on decarbonizing transportation. All of this great work would not be possible without our crew members, and we continue to invest in protecting the sustainability of our talent pipeline as well. Our JetBlue Foundation, which supports aviation-related STEM programs, recently awarded grants to 10 charitable organizations to help increase advocacy for inclusion, gender, and racial parity within STEM and aviation.
In conclusion, we absolutely recognize the short-term margin impact of the April disruption and the operational investments we are making for spring and summer. They are essential to restore all of our customers' confidence and drive the higher revenue mix enabled by the NEA through the better schedules and benefits that will appeal to corporate and high-value leisure customers. I'll close with another thank you to our crew members. I'm always amazed and inspired by your resilience and hard work taking care of our customers and, of course, each other. With that, over to you, Joanna.
Thank you, Robin. I'd also like to thank our crew members for always supporting each other and caring for our customers, especially when the operation experiences significant stress as we have seen this month. Severe weather compounded by ATC challenges, particularly across Florida and the Northeast, have had an outsized impact on our operation, where 95% of our daily flights operate. Despite being well on track with our summer operational preparations, we have reevaluated our capacity planning assumptions for the summer in light of these challenges.
Turning to capacity on slide 10. We began adjusting May capacity last month, and we are continuing these adjustments into the summer and second half of the year as we focus on building a more operable and resilient schedule that takes into consideration the reality of the operating environment, including elevated pilot attrition, pilot training delays stemming from disruptions to planned training schedules due to Omicron, business partner staffing shortages, and ATC staffing shortages. In addition to our capacity adjustments, we are redoubling our efforts to bring the JetBlue experience back to our customers and our crew members.
This includes maintaining our hiring pace for the summer despite the lower capacity outlook, getting ahead of supply chain pressures by pre-purchasing key supplies and additional ground equipment for our airport and technical operations teams, making infrastructure investments throughout our network, such as redeveloping the south lobby at JFK to support additional customers and COVID documentation checks, as well as additional gate hold seating and improvements to the roadway to better manage congestion during peak times. We are also investing in additional check-in kiosks, as well as investing in additional resources for our crew members to better support them with hotels and transportation when there is bad weather and flights are disrupted. Finally, as our capacity has come down, we are investing in more spare aircraft and dedicated maintenance lines to provide our maintenance teams with additional touch time with aircraft.
We believe our operational investments and capacity reductions will improve our operational performance in the coming months while we continue to fly a record number of customers. For the first quarter of 2022, our capacity declined 0.3% year-over-year as we proactively trimmed our schedules throughout the quarter in response to rising fuel prices and operational challenges, and we have now made additional cuts to make our operation more resilient. For the second quarter, we expect capacity to increase in a range between 0%-3% year-over-year, the first quarter since 2020 that we expect to operate at levels above 2019, a significant milestone in our recovery. We recently launched three new Blue cities in the first quarter, including Puerto Vallarta, Kansas City, and Milwaukee.
Later this quarter, we plan to launch service to Asheville, as well as our inaugural Canadian Blue city, Vancouver. Our transatlantic service continues to perform very well, and we are excited to begin service to London from Boston this summer, with Gatwick service beginning in July, followed by Heathrow in August. For the full year 2022, we are now planning to grow capacity between 0% and 5% versus 2019 to reflect our more conservative planning assumptions. Turning to corporate travel, this continues to be a positive momentum story as business bookings have recovered to approximately 75% of 2019 levels as we exited the first quarter, compared to roughly half at the end of last year. We expect a continued acceleration in Q2 and beyond, especially as we drive improvements in our operation.
We are leveraging the NEA to grow our airline for both leisure and corporate travelers with a much enhanced network and schedule, driving a competitive value proposition for customers. As we execute our near-term plan, we will monitor the demand and fuel environment closely, and we will remain nimble with our capacity with the ultimate goal of returning to profitability in the second half of the year. Turning to slide 11. During the first quarter, our revenue declined 7.2% year-over-year, which came in more than 6 points higher versus our original forecast in late January. We initially anticipated a step function increase in demand following President's Day weekend as case counts dropped, and we are very pleased to see pent-up demand materialize beyond our expectations.
Load factors improved meaningfully from an average of 62% in the month of January to 80% in March. In April, our loads are now tracking in the mid-80s. As we bring new crew members into the operation, we are building towards right-sized staffing levels and restoring efficiency and productivity levels over the long term. For the second quarter of 2022, we expect revenue to increase between 11% and 16% year-over-year. This includes up to a 4-point revenue impact from the operational disruption. Despite the meaningful impact to the quarter and the year, we are set to generate our best quarterly revenue result in the second quarter and are positioned to accelerate this momentum through the summer.
In fact, looking beyond the near-term headwinds, we anticipate June RASM to be approximately 20% year-over-year, and we expect June to be a nicely profitable month as we head into the peak summer. I am pleased to see the record demand for travel on JetBlue all across our network, further fueled by the continued execution of our commercial initiatives. Based on our revised capacity plan, roughly 80% of our flights touch the Northeast as we continue to build out our Northeast Alliance. Through the growth enabled by the NEA, we can continue to do what we do best, bring down airfares in underserved and overpriced markets and deliver better service to more communities.
By growing our Northeast footprint, we are bringing even more competition to customers in the Northeast, creating jobs and generating broader economic benefits, while also positioning to capture a greater share of the corporate travel wallet in the region. Loyalty continues to perform exceptionally well, and we achieved another month of record acquisitions and spend on our co-brand credit cards. We've also expanded Elite loyalty perks to TrueBlue Mosaic and Advantage members starting on March 23. In addition to space available extra legroom seats, we are rewarding our most loyal customers with two complimentary checked bags and same-day confirmed changes. This is on top of reciprocal Elite benefits launched earlier in the quarter. Our suite of ancillary products is resonating well with our customers, who are finding great value and choices with our different options.
I am pleased with the ongoing execution as we generated an ancillary revenue per customer increase of 70% in the first quarter year-over-year. Our segmented offering is also helping to shift the mix of our customers, driving a benefit for JetBlue. We are seeing acceleration across all customer segments and outstanding performance in the premium leisure category in particular. In closing, thanks again to our crew members for your patience and perseverance in helping JetBlue manage through challenging circumstances. I remain excited about our long-term trajectory and look forward to sharing more at Investor Day next month. Now I'll turn the call over to you, Ursula.
Thank you, Joanna. I would also like to add my thanks to our crew members for their dedication to taking care of our customers and each other. They have laid the groundwork and are executing every day to position JetBlue to deliver for all of our stakeholders. I'll start on slide 13 with a brief overview of our financial results for the quarter. Revenue was $1.7 billion, down 7.2% year-over-year. Cost per available seat mile was up 17.5% year-over-year. CASM ex-fuel was up 13.9% year-over-year, and GAAP loss per share was $0.79, and adjusted loss per share was $0.80.
We are extremely pleased with the demand and revenue momentum, which accelerated throughout the quarter and resulted in first quarter revenue that was roughly 6 points ahead of our original January guidance. I am also pleased that we executed within the range of our original cost guide despite abnormally elevated winter weather events. Looking ahead, as Joanna noted, we are reducing our full-year capacity growth outlook to a range of 0%-5% as we work to restore operational reliability and as we remain mindful of elevated fuel prices in the back half of the year. That said, the strength in bookings is driving revenue in the second quarter that is expected to be up 10%-15% year-over-year, which will set a new high watermark for quarterly revenue in JetBlue's history.
Despite the dramatic spike in fuel prices, we have been able to recapture nearly all of the cost increase. Turning to slide 14. During the first quarter, CASM ex-fuel increased 13.9% versus 2019, in line with our original guidance. As a reminder, incentives and premium pay tied to the Omicron and weather disruptions were worth roughly 3 points of CASM ex-fuel in the first quarter. For the second quarter, we are forecasting CASM ex-fuel to increase 15%-17%. The sequential increase versus Q1 reflects some inefficient closing capacity reductions in Q2, frontline premium and incentive pay to support the operation, ramp-up costs as we maintain our hiring pace for the summer, and our recently signed deal with ALPA.
If we adjust for the cost impact of the operational disruptions in April, our Q2 CASM ex-fuel would have been approximately 10%, demonstrating solid underlying improvement as we started to see progress in areas such as maintenance. All in, the April disruption impacted our pre-tax margin in the second quarter by approximately 6 percentage points and keeps us at a loss for the quarter. That said, we expect to be solidly profitable for the month of June as we exit the quarter with strong momentum. Looking ahead, as we build a more resilient operation and reach a more optimal staffing level, we expect to gain further efficiencies and productivity after the summer, meaning we won't need to rely as much on things like premium and incentive pay, driving continued CASM ex-fuel improvement as we move through the remainder of the year.
While the operational disruption in April has delayed our return to solid pre-tax profitability, we are investing meaningfully this summer to restore operational performance, and we believe we are on a path to building back our margins and creating value for our owners through strong revenue growth, disciplined cost control, and a methodical approach to capacity decisions. As always, we'll continue to be nimble and adjust course as needed. We are very excited about the deliveries of next-generation fuel-efficient aircraft as we embark on a multi-year fleet modernization program. As a reminder, the A220s are 35%-40% more fuel efficient per seat compared to the E190s they are replacing, while the A321neos are 15%-20% more fuel efficient versus our A321ceos. Moving to slide 15.
We now expect our full-year capacity to increase in the range of 0%-5%, approximately 10 points lower at the midpoint versus our prior forecast. We are reducing capacity as we work to overcome operational challenges which are driving incremental costs through premiums and incentives on top of people-related ramp-up costs. Following this sizable reduction, we now expect CASM ex-fuel for the full year 2022 to increase in the range of 10%-15% versus 2019, compared with our initial expectations for an increase of 1%-5%.
The difference between our previous full-year CASM ex fuel midpoint to the new guidance midpoint, a 10-point difference, breaks down as follows. 6 points driven by the capacity reduction, a total of 3 points from the spring operational challenges and the investments we're making for the summer, as previously outlined by Joanna, and1 point from inflationary pressures from pilots and our business partners. A slower growth rate creates a number of opportunities and additional cost levers that we can pull, including optimizing maintenance spend, accelerating aircraft retirements, and cutting discretionary spend across the entire organization. We believe we're taking the right actions to get back on track and fortify our long-term value creation framework, which we are excited to share more about at our Investor Day next month, along with the details on the next phase of our structural cost initiative. Turning to capital allocation on slide 16.
In the first quarter, we continued to make progress on our balance sheet while investing in our fleet and maintaining a strong liquidity position. During the first quarter, we paid down approximately $83 million of debt, and we funded approximately $160 million in capital expenditures. At the end of March, our adjusted debt to cap was 54%, and we closed the quarter with liquidity of $2.9 billion, or 36% of 2019 revenue. Turning to the fleet, I'd like to highlight our recent revision to our aircraft order book. I'm pleased to have a revised agreement with Airbus in place as we exercised and accelerated 30 A220 options for delivery starting in 2022 through 2026.
These 30 A220s will ultimately replace our 30 owned E190s and allow us to fully exit the E190 fleet by the end of 2026, driving a meaningful CASM tailwind and providing a solid platform for margin expansion and earnings growth. For the full year 2022, our CapEx forecast remains at approximately $1 billion, mainly for aircraft, which we intend to fund with cash. In closing, we've recognized that we've had to pivot this year as we need to get our operation back on track and regain our customers' and crew members' trust. While this means lower utilization and productivity levels versus our original plan, we can now take advantage of the reduced growth outlook to pursue further structural opportunities, such as further optimizing our maintenance spend and reevaluating accelerated aircraft retirements.
As we think beyond 2022, we're looking forward to our Investor Day next month, where we'll provide you with a framework for JetBlue's long-term earnings power and deep dive some of our key strategic initiatives that will drive out our out-year financial targets and create value for our owners as we look to expand our margins beyond pre-pandemic levels in the coming years. I'll close with another thank you to our crew members for their resilience and hard work in managing through all the challenges that come our way. With that, we will now take your questions.
Thanks, everyone. Lee, we're now ready for the question and answer session with the analysts. Please go ahead with the instructions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Again, if you have any questions, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Catherine O'Brien from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Hey, Robin. Thanks for the time. Just thinking about some of the staffing issues, you know, it sounds like there's some short-term headwinds you and the industry are facing tied to Omicron training delays and just being at max training throughput. But then there's also elevated attrition in addition to staffing issues at airports, air traffic control, which aren't directly under JetBlue's control. Can you just walk us through when you see each of those buckets, the shorter and long-term issues within JetBlue's labor force and then throughout the more general travel infrastructure? When do you see those easing? I guess what can you do today to influence the pace of those getting back on track?
I know you laid out some operational boosters that you're going through for the summer, but just like specifically on hiring and getting staffing back up. Thanks so much.
Sure. Thanks, Catherine, for the question. The teams have done a fantastic job across all of our work groups, really ramping up hiring for the last year. If you recall, you know, we ramped capacity faster than any other airline last summer. We've had a couple of, you know, challenges across the industry, whether it's the Delta variant, Omicron, that have created a level of volatility across the industry. What we're striving for is to find a place where the operation is more reliable and where there's a certain degree of certainty that we can plan around. Getting ahead of many of these staffing issues is critical because there is a long lead time for some of the roles.
I fully expect our airports team, our in-flight team, and our technical operations teams to be fully staffed as we step in through the summer timeframe and into a more, I think, normal course of business. Where we see, I think, meaningful pressures, and it's something I think everybody's seeing across the industry, is on the pilot front. We are seeing elevated attrition levels with pilots.
You know, we've ramped up to max capacity there. We will catch up on some of the training delays, but we have to plan for a world where we just have elevated pilot attrition and adjust our training, our training plans and adjust our simulator capacity, et cetera, et cetera, to speak to this kind of new world where pilots are just gonna be a bit more challenging from a hiring and retention perspective. You know, we continue to have a very strong pipeline. We built out a number of pilot gateways years ago recognizing that this potentially could be a problem down the road. We have great retention among the pilots that come through our gateway programs.
At the end of the day, you know, given the legacy carriers have accelerated retirements through COVID of pilots, there's just, you know, I think a challenge the whole industry is facing right now in terms of pilot hiring, and it will be facing, I think, for the foreseeable future. With regard to the external factors, I cannot speak to when we think the FAA is gonna be fully staffed. We've obviously seen acute pressures down in the Jacksonville Center in Florida, but I think everybody, you know, around the United States is looking at these talent challenges. I think on the good news front, we've got a great pipeline. People like working here, and we're gonna continue to double down on our culture and on making sure that JetBlue continues to be a preferred airline employer.
Okay, great. Then maybe just one on the June. You gave us June RASM up 20%, you know, showing some nice acceleration over the course of the quarter there. I guess just, you know, given the cuts you've had to make, do you feel more confident than in a normal year about that June number, just given, you know, some of the close-in cuts? Like, can you just maybe give us an update? I know booking curves got really short during COVID. Sounds like we're moving back to normalization. Just maybe like your confidence level and anything that might make you more confident on June than in a normal year. Thanks so much for your time.
Sure. Yeah, I mean, we're extremely confident about the revenue landscape right now. We are seeing extremely robust demand across our leisure segment. Premium domestic is extremely strong. Mint Q1 Mint was 6 points better than core. Our VFR markets are performing exceptionally well. We're very, very bullish on the revenue front both from a total revenue, but also from a unit revenue perspective. We're yielding up in a meaningful way. Fares and yields are now above 2019 levels, and we do expect June and the summer to be very strong.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth from Evercore. Your line is open.
Hey, thanks. Duane here. Good morning. Robin, appreciate the brief intro comments, but when do you expect to hear a response from Spirit? You know, what have you learned so far since unveiling this to the world? What do you think is taking so long?
Thanks, Duane, and good morning. In terms of any questions you may have about the timeline, I would suggest that you address those to Spirit. You know, I'm not really gonna comment any more at this stage other than that, our team is working very diligently and very hard to move things along as quickly as possible.
Okay. Fair enough. Then, you know, sorry to go here, but just on the growth takedown, this feels surprisingly unsurprising. Many investors believe that the implied growth acceleration you were guiding to felt ambitious, aggressive, last quarter. You know, multiple large carriers saw this coming last year and took their growth rates down kind of proactively. Yet JetBlue expressed a lot of confidence just last quarter, just on this call three months ago, that you could hire and you could sort of pull off the summer. What specifically broke down here in just three months' time, or was this just a forecasting problem?
Yeah, I think, you know, at the end of the day, we've had, I think, exceptional revenue performance for the last year. If we could continue to proceed at this growth pace, I think we would continue to have exceptional revenue performance. There's clearly not a demand issue. We've been, I think, planning well for the summer, but there were a series of things early this year that transpired. I think pilot training delays stemming from Omicron in Q1, so that's January. And then in March, you know, we communicated that we will be moderating capacity into May and beyond.
Obviously we would have liked to have course-corrected quickly, but in this volatile world where, you know, there's new variants that happen upon you and, you know, attrition challenges across the industry, I think we've done a pretty strong job pivoting and adjusting our capacity to reflect our resources and the environment. Nobody could have anticipated that Florida in April would have, you know, 115 hours of ATC delays for that month compared to 22 in 2019. These are challenging times, and I think we're doing the responsible thing by taking capacity down and right-sizing it to reflect the resources we have and the external environment.
I think, Duane, let me just build on that because, you know, it's a good question. You know, I think that, as Joanna said, we actually made a change in May that we announced in early March. We also at that point, you know, suggested it would continue into the summer. You know, I think what you're seeing today is just a couple of things. First of all, you know, we wanted to be as clear and transparent with investors about how we're thinking about the rest of the year. Because you're still seeing airlines cut schedules every weekend. You know, it is still a very nonlinear volatile process.
You know, I think what we're trying to do is kind of set the stage for the rest of the year. You know, we could be accused here clearly of almost over-investing and being too cautious as we go into the summer. You know, that is an extremely deliberate approach that we're taking because we know how important it is for us to drive margins, for us to deliver the benefits on the NEA, for us to continue to be the preferred airline in the Northeast for customers premium leisure and also leisure travel. We know we have to deliver a stable operation, and we have become increasingly concerned about some of the external environment constraints that we may see this summer based on what we've seen in April. We wanna respond quickly and decisively to that.
Listen, I appreciate the thoughts and maybe just one last follow-up. I hear you on attrition, right? It's something we've been hearing about for a long time. Over a year, right? It's something we've been hearing about for over a year. To what extent is staff productivity surprising you? If you could just comment on that.
Maybe I'll offer a broad comment, and Ursula can chime in. We need to get to a more stable environment to start seeing productivity settle in. When you're hiring to just backfill the person who left a month before, that's not a great place to be in. Our focus is on driving stability across the operation. At that point, we're confident that we will start seeing some of the productivity that we need to see going forward. I think back half of the year as we stabilize, I think we're cautiously optimistic that we'll be in a better place.
Thank you.
Yeah. I would just add, Duane, like, coming into this year, we were very focused on a growth track and driving productivity and utilization ramp up throughout the year. Given the pivot and the reduction in capacity on a full year basis means that we're gonna have significantly lower aircraft utilization and essentially a delay in the productivity benefits. We do expect, once we get to that optimal staffing level, to see productivity improvement in the fourth quarter. However, in addition, with the capacity reduction, it also means that we can take advantage of other structural initiatives such as replanning maintenance and also looking at potentially accelerating incremental aircraft retirements. Those are some structural cost areas that we're now very acutely focused on, to ensure that we can deliver on a cost discipline not only this year, but as we enter 2023.
Appreciate the thoughts.
Thanks, Duane.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Mike Linenberg from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Oh, hey. Hey, good morning, everyone. Hey, Rob, I guess you were speaking on CNBC or something this morning. You had mentioned something about $270 million to fix the ops, and then I saw a headline that said $180 million. Is that what was a 2022 number and one's a longer term number? Can you just clarify what that, you know, several hundred million dollars of cost to fix ops is and what's the timeframe?
I didn't do a CNBC interview this morning, Mike. That's this afternoon. I did a couple of other interviews. That really relates to the 3 points of CASM headwind that Ursula talked about. If we think about, first of all, the cost of the April disruption itself. We ended up canceling a large number of flights. You know, those flights are being crewed, and, you know, they were fully operational. That is a very significant CASM headwind. On top of that, in order to recover from some of the weather events, you know, we saw a big outflow in terms of premium pay. That's really about half of that 3 points of CASM that you were referring to.
The rest of it is us taking a much more cautious approach about for the rest of the spring and summer. You know, for example, even though capacity is significantly down, we're maintaining current hiring plans. You know, we are putting additional resilience and redundancy into the JFK operation. Those are a couple of examples, and that makes up the other 1.5 points of the 3 points of CASM that represents the other half, about 1.5 points.
Okay. That's helpful. Thanks. Just, I wanna go back to, you know, on the attrition thing. You know, when I sort of think about JetBlue historically, I mean, that's it a destination carrier for airline professionals historically. Yet now it does seem like maybe for some it's a stepping stone. I'm not sure, like, what can you do? Is this a secular shift or, you know, beyond, you know, throwing a lot more money at the pilots? You know, obviously you are a growth carrier, and that's something that's attractive to pilots. For now, you can't grow.
Like, is this something that's with you for the next six months, or is this something more structural and it goes on for several years where you're constantly playing catch up to attract, you know, the people that, you know, you would attract in the past?
Thanks, Mike. Really appreciate the question. It's not an issue of attraction. We have a strong pipeline, particularly on pilots. They like coming here. The issue becomes obviously time to upgrade. It becomes pay. If you want to fly wide bodies, there might be different paths that you want to take. We remain a very attractive carrier. We need to plan for elevated levels of attrition.
Mm-hmm.
Recognizing that there may be some pilots that choose to leav in in , you know, years zero to four because of, you know, a different life choice. We also do a great job retaining pilots as well. It's a bit of a mixed bag. We've got a number that stay with us, and we have a number that leave. We need to plan our training and our simulator capacity for an elevated level of attrition, but we also need to ensure that those who come and want to stay at a carrier like JetBlue stay, which many of them are.
Mm-hmm.
We have these gateway programs which are fantastic. They bring crew members in from JetBlue family members, friends, et cetera. We've been doing this for several years now. We're now generating a decent size number of pilots coming through those pipelines that have a real stickiness to JetBlue, our culture, and the type of organization that we are. Attrition is very low among those cohorts, and so we are looking at continuing to increase the number of folks that come through there. You know, I think the industry as a whole, I think is looking at, you know, what do we do about the pilot shortage? Legacy carrier retirements accelerated this pilot shortage issue by a few years. It could very well lead to, you know, lower aggregate capacity growth over the next couple of years.
Mm-hmm.
we are pivoting our, you know, philosophy around how do we build, you know, a model where we have elevated attrition, where we have the gateways that crew members and their family members and other aspiring pilots come through and they want to stay at JetBlue, and then continuing to build out partnerships with other carriers, feeder carriers, around the United States.
Great.
The other thing I'd like to add to that, Mike, is I think the other structural change you're gonna see is that the pay rates for pilots across all of the large airlines will start to converge.
Mm-hmm.
I think, you know, we're already seeing that. I think you're gonna continue to see that. You know, I think that is something that could be around for a number of years.
Great. Thanks for that. Thanks, Robin. Thanks, Joanna.
Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Savi Syth from Raymond James. Your line is open.
Morning, everyone. Just if I might follow up on Mike and Katie's questions, based on kind of the capacity growth that you have in mind for the next few years, just how many pilots a year do you need to hire, and how many of them might come from your kinda internal programs? To follow up also, Robin, on your pay rate question, if that is the case, then does that mean kinda legacy versus kinda like your cost unit cost will then also start to narrow versus kinda legacy carriers because there's a bigger gap there between, you know, where your kinda LCC band is versus legacy carrier pay band?
Savi, on the second one, you know, I don't think it's gonna be a huge issue for JetBlue. You know, our pay rates were already pretty close. In fact, with this adjustment that we just did, you know, I think you'll find if you compare our 320 pay rates versus some of the legacy carriers, you'll find them very similar. You know, it's more a comment aimed at maybe some of the other carriers that have lower pay rates and how those will probably need to come up. Just my opinion. In terms of go-forward rate, you know, we'll provide more color at Investor Day about how we're thinking about multi-year.
I think that we are gonna continue to clearly prudently plan more conservatively around pilot attrition until we have a better sense of how long this is gonna be. I mean, the good news for JetBlue is, and Joanna mentioned this, we started our gateway programs a number of years ago, and it's producing a meaningful number of pilots. It's not like we're sort of starting from scratch last year and trying to get this thing going. We have every confidence that as we recruit more and more through these programs, those are pilots that have more traditionally seen it as remaining as a destination carrier. I think that's how we're thinking about the next years.
I certainly think that, in my opinion, and some of you heard this before, that the access to pilots really becomes the governing factor for growth in the industry over the next few years.
That's helpful. If I might just, Joanna, just to follow up on some of the kind of ATC-type issues. I'm just trying to understand Florida saw a lot of capacity being added to, you know, over the last several years, and that accelerated the last couple of years, I think. Is this more of a near-term staffing issue that the FAA needs to address, or is it becoming kind of a congested airspace like you have in the Northeast? I was just kinda curious if there's something fundamentally structurally changing in Florida or kind of an issue that just needs to be addressed.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I know you're down in Florida. I think everybody's in Florida right now. I think it's probably a temporary issue with just the amount of capacity that's in there. We do think once international opens up a bit more, once the COVID, document checks go away, the inbound international, you'll start seeing, I think, a rebalancing of capacity into other leisure destinations beyond Florida. But, and then I think you've also got a winter summer, thing playing out as well there. I do think there are structural issues regarding FAA, ATC staffing. They've talked about it before. You know, I think April was a particularly acute month. If you look at JetBlue's network footprint, 45% of our flights touch Florida.
It makes perfect sense that when you have a significant ATC center understaffed by, call it 50%, and with that volume of flights you have going in there's no way that you aren't gonna see a significant amount of delays from those carriers that have a very big footprint in Florida. I think the capacity will be largely, hopefully short term as carriers right-size their networks over time and COVID aftershocks come away. I do think this FAA staffing shortage could be potentially a more protracted item. You know, we continue to be very focused on that.
Helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Conor Cunningham from MKM Partners. Your line is open.
Hey everyone. Thank you for the time. You know, I think that investors are just, I mean, there's been a lot of conversation about structural versus temporary here, so I'm just trying to unpack it like what's actually gonna be your long-term utilization rate of the airline going forward. Like, why shouldn't we just assume, given the host of issues that you have, that it'll be a challenge for you ever to get back to this 12-hour flying per day? I mean, can you just speak to the utilization, you know, in the context of hiring problems and you leaning more into, you know, tougher airports like New York and so on? If you could just speak to that'd be great.
Good morning, Conor. Thanks for the question. As I mentioned, you know, at the beginning of the year, we were acutely focused and on a growth track with high utilization. Given the meaningful step back, due to the challenges that we've seen in April, utilization is gonna be down double digits throughout the remainder of this year. I also think as we think about 2023, capacity most likely will be below our original anticipated capacity growth. One of the structural levers I highlighted was taking another look at aircraft retirements in light of the lower utilization levels. Can we have the ability to drive some structural cost savings that quite frankly some of our peers were able to take advantage of in retiring fleets throughout COVID?
That's an opportunity that we're looking at given this reset and the lower utilization levels that we'll expect this year as well as into next year, given the constraints.
Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And then, you know, so yeah, your headcount's actually up fairly nicely in the first quarter, but your capacity is down. I realize you talked about the productivity conversation earlier, but I'm trying to pinpoint like when we should expect. It seems like that's gonna expand further, that gap between capacity and headcount in the near term, but then should gradually improve. Is that like a 3Q event when we peak out, or should we just expect that to kind of be elevated through the early part of even next year?
Yeah. I would expect us to see a level of staffing stability and operational stability, and that will drive productivity in the fourth quarter. We're making investments in the short term in order to continue hiring and staffing through the summer, and we believe that will bring a level of resiliency to the operation and we'll be at optimal staffing levels in order to get that productivity in the fourth quarter.
One thing I'd just add on the headcount number is that while capacity is flat, stage length and gauge is up. For example, you know, more A321 s, the restyled A320s , both of which have four in-flight crew members. In terms of customer support or reservations, you know, we've seen a big increase there related just to, and you've seen this across the industry, the vast number of additional calls that are coming in for disruption. Those two areas are sort of driving a disproportionate increase in actual headcount.
Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Helane Becker from Cowen. Your line is open.
Thanks very much, operator. Hi, everybody, and thank you for the time. Robin, you actually just partly answered my question about bigger aircraft. Like, how can you accelerate delivery of bigger aircraft to alleviate some of your staffing issues, especially with pilots? And then my other question is related to scaling up to 300 flights in the New York area. Can this air traffic control system handle that level of airport utilization? And, you know, I know you said you would be more conservative, but how should we think about getting there from here?
No. Thanks, Helane. In terms of your first question, you know, I think no, we don't have any plans to accelerate any more airplanes. We talked recently about the A220s . You know, I think what this adjustment allows us to do is to you know, look, as Ursula mentioned earlier, look at some of the retirement opportunities that exist for some of our older airplanes and accelerate out of that. Because back to Conor's comment, while I recognize that aircraft utilization probably needs to be a bit lower than it has been historically reflecting the airspace, you know, obviously, that lower aircraft utilization also creates the opportunity to drive some retirements in a world where you know, we look at sort of structurally lower growth because of pilot supply.
In terms of the growth in New York, you know, one of the areas that we have been adjusting is Newark. You know, we have some of the capacity changes we make have reduced our flying in and out of Newark. Obviously from a JFK and LaGuardia perspective, which are slotted airports, that is something that's much harder to do. We do have slightly less dependency in the New York airspace following this capacity adjustment than we did before because of the changes that we're making in Newark.
Got it. That's very helpful. Thanks, Robin.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Baker from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everybody. Without commenting on the deal specifically, just given the first half challenges, do you stand by the leverage recovery guidance that you gave us when you announced the bid? You know, the standalone outlook, you know, is obviously worse. Just trying to quantify the need to potentially issue equity.
Hi, Jamie. Good morning. The original plan still stands for the offer for Spirit to be a full cash offer. Obviously, we've taken one step back in terms of our projections for full year profitability this year, but we still have a strong balance sheet, and our offer stands as is. Our 2022 leverage will now be, you know, slightly above 1x, which is obviously a slight change compared to the presentation that we laid out a couple weeks ago. That's really driven by, obviously, the April step back here.
Second, specifically to Robin, 2007 was a different era for the industry, for JetBlue. The constitution of JetBlue's board is different today. It's worth noting there's precedent for senior leaders being let go when operations have suffered. How would you characterize your recent conversations with the board? Could you say how much that time has been split between discussing the merger and discussing the operational challenges?
Well, first of all, Jamie, let me, as I often do on this call, wish you a very happy birthday week, not forgotten.
Thank you.
No, look, I think, you know, the operational concerns are of concern to all of us, the leadership team, the board, and, you know, more importantly, our crew members. You know, clearly, as you know, we operate in the most congested, complex geography in the country. You know, what we have to do is just get better, you know, at managing that. I mean, as you know, weather comes in, flights will get canceled, there'll be ATC delays. Really, we continue to make a lot of investments to allow us to get better at that.
You know, I think that the pivot that we're announcing here in terms of reducing capacity, distressing the summer, investing in staffing, all of these things are the things that will help us deliver a better, more stable operation. We can't control the weather, but we can try and control everything else, and that's what we're laying out to do. You know, the number one priority from that for me, for the leadership team, for the board right now is restoring our operational performance because that is the path to margin recovery. While I fully accept we take a step back in the second quarter, there will be no catalyst for driving better cost performance and improved revenue than a stable operation, and that's what we're focused on.
Okay, Robin, I appreciate that. Also worth noting that I share my birthday with the Piedmont hub in Charlotte, proving that there's always an aviation angle. Thank you.
Always, Jamie, with you. Always.
Always. Take care.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Dan McKenzie from Seaport Global. Your line is open.
Oh, hey. Thanks. Good morning, guys. A couple of questions here. Profitability in the back half of the year. I'm just wondering if you can elaborate on how we get there. Is it being driven by premium revenue, corporate demand? You know, is there some revenue acceleration from here, or how much of the profitability is just tied to better utilization?
Good morning, Dan. As mentioned in our remarks, the revenue and demand environment continues to be really, really strong. We're expecting profitability as early as June, and that's really driven by, you know, a top-line rise in number of, like, 20% as of right now. As we navigate through the year, we expect, especially in the third quarter, demand in the revenue environment to be extremely strong. In 2H of this year, we'll also see, you know, a 4-point sequential improvement from a CASM ex-fuel perspective. We will start to gain some efficiencies, as we discussed earlier, around maintenance as well as productivity in the fourth quarter. That's the roadmap, but maybe to give more detail on top line, I'll pass it over to Dave.
Sure. Dan, thanks for the question. Just a little bit more color on the revenue. In addition to the really strong demand environment we're seeing, we have a couple other factors that will improve as we go through the year. First, just a reminder that we had a 4-point revenue headwind this quarter from the operational disruptions that should not continue past Q2. The NEA is off to a great start in ramping up well. We expect that to continue throughout the year. We expect to have additional revenue acceleration as the NEA performs better and better.
Thanks for that. You know, I guess just bigger picture, you know, for those investors that, you know, take a longer view of the story, have lots of patience. You know, going back to the PowerPoint, the goal of expanding margins beyond 2019, you know, so the $2.50-$3 a share target. You know, at this point, you know, what's the path and timeframe for getting there today? Is it, you know, how much corporate travel has to come back? You know, what size or scale from a growth perspective is required, you know? You know, are new revenue initiatives or cost initiatives needed to offset, you know, some of the challenges we're seeing today?
Yeah, maybe I'll sort of take a high level. I think, Dan, first of all, it's a great tee up to Investor Day because, you know, our plan at Investor Day is gonna really lay out that multi-year path. I think 2023 will be the first year we're actually comping against the year before as opposed to 2019. It feels like it's a new beginning. Look, on the revenue side, I think we talked about a lot of the catalysts, and I think, you know, we have a lot of very strong revenue initiatives that are ramping up nicely.
I mean, if we didn't have that four points of headwind for the very significant operational disruption that we talked about earlier, you know, our top of the range for the quarter would be 20 points. By the way, we do factor in a certain amount of weather events, right? We don't want to just always talk about the weather. You know, Joanna described how meaningful it was that in Florida, for example, the first 20 days of April, we were in ground stop or ground delay programs for over 115 hours. I think if you compare that to 2019, it was 22 hours. So significantly bigger impact. You know, I believe that we will work through those challenges.
You know, already we've seen a better air traffic control environment in the last 10 days of April, so that's encouraging, and hopefully that will continue. Dave talked about the ramp up, the NEA revenue, the growth of JetBlue Travel Products. On the cost side, you know, I think that you know, we are making good progress on some of the underlying cost initiatives that we've talked about before. We'll share more of that at Investor Day. We've also concluded the work on a new multi-year structural cost program that we've been working on for the last several months. We have been working with sort of some external partners on that, and we'll be laying that out at Investor Day as well.
You know, continued and accelerated revenue momentum, and, you know, when we get past the quarter. When you take the revenue acceleration and you take the structural cost initiatives, we'll share more about, you know, we're very confident some of the benefits from some of that, and we'll be sharing more of that at Investor Day as well.
Understood. Thanks for the time, you guys.
Asked and answered, but you know, one for Robin, I guess. You know, when I look at this, you know, kind of short term cuts to capacity just seem like huge operational problems. When I think about kind of longer term, you know, how much does M&A you know actually attempt to solve this labor issue as opposed to just accelerating the growth of the airline? Interested to get your thoughts there. Thanks.
No, thanks, Andrew. No, you know, I do think you're right. I mean, some of what you're seeing now is us just trying to significantly de-risk the summer. You know, we can talk after