Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the twenty twenty Annual Meeting of Stockholders of JetBlue Airways Corporation. It is 09:00 in the morning here in New York on Thursday, 05/14/2020. I am Robin Hayes, chief executive officer of JetBlue Airways Corporation. On behalf of our directors, officers, and crew members, I thank you for attending our annual meeting. We are pleased to be hosting a virtual annual meeting this morning and welcome all of you attending via the Internet.
We are doing a virtual meeting as we believe virtual annual meetings provide expanded access, improved communication and cost savings for our stockholders and the company. As we've learned, hosting a virtual meeting enables increased stockholder attendance and participation from locations around the world. In addition, the online format allows us to communicate more effectively by a pre meeting forum where our shareholders can ask questions and which our stockholders access by visiting www.proxyvote.com with their control number. Again, that is www.proxyvote.com with your control number. We're also using the virtual only format to comply with social distancing requirements here in our hometown of New York City.
This meeting is being webcast live and recorded and will be available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.jetblue.com. Now, I would like to welcome the directors of the company who are joining us remotely today. Joel Peterson and Frank Zika, directors of the company since respectively 1999 and 1998 and our long standing Chair and Vice Chair of the Board will be stepping down from the Board today and are not standing for reelection at the company. We'd like to thank each of them for their exemplary service to the company. Seven of our current board members are standing for reelection today.
Terry McClure and Vivek Sharma were appointed to our board in 2019 and are standing for election by our stockholders for the first time. Bob Ledoux is a nominee for election to our board. I'd also like to thank the members of our leadership team who are participating today and recognize the many JetBlue crew members attending online. Also with us today are Stephanie Hollander and Will Copeland of Ernst and Young LLP, JetBlue's independent auditors Dennis Glazier, counsel to our board of directors and Dan Lidovitz, Doreen Linnenfeld and Lona Nalangara of Sherman and Sterling LLP, counsel to JetBlue. I now call the JetBlue Airways Corporation Annual Meeting of our Stockholders to order.
We will proceed with the formal business of the meeting as set forth in your notice of annual meeting and proxy statement. Now I'd like to turn it over to our General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Brandon Nelson. Brandon, over to you.
Thanks, Robin, and good morning, everyone. Following the presentation of each of the proposals, there will be an opportunity for discussion of those items. After the formal part of our meeting, mister Hayes will review the company's recent business activities. The meeting will be conducted in accordance with the rules of conduct available on the meeting site. Please remember, all attendees may submit questions at any time during the meeting.
There's no need to wait until later in
the meeting.
If the questions relate to a proposal, they will be read and addressed following that proposal's introduction. General questions will be addressed in the q and a session after mister Hayes' remarks on the company's business. All stockholders of record as of 03/19/2020 were able to submit their questions prior to the meeting and are able to continue to submit their questions live during the meeting at www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/jblu20twenty. We will try to answer as many of these questions as time permits during the Q and A session, which follows Mr. Hayes' presentation.
We have provided each stockholder of record as of 03/19/2020 with a notice of Internet availability of our proxy materials, including information on how to access our proxy statement and annual report. Copies of these documents are available to any stockholder. Instructions on how to access the proxy materials over the Internet or to request a printed copy may be found in the notice. The agenda for today's meeting and the rules of conduct of the meeting are posted on the annual meeting landing page. Please familiarize yourself with these rules and abide by them at all times.
Let us turn to the official business of the twenty twenty annual meeting. Our board of directors adopted resolutions providing for the virtual meeting to be held at this time and place, directing that notice be given as provided in the bylaws and fixing 03/19/2020 as the record date for determining which stockholders are entitled to notice of and to vote at this meeting. On or about 04/03/2020, JetBlue stockholders as of the record date were sent notice of the annual meeting stating the time and location of the meeting with the Internet address to participate virtually and the meeting purpose, along with a proxy statement and the Board of Directors' recommendations. Since that date, a list of stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting has been available for inspection at the company's Long Island City support center and remains available. Dora Habachi and Oliver Reimers have been designated to act as inspectors and judges of election, have filed with me their oaths as inspectors and judges of election, and have provided me with a duly executed certificate of quorum.
The stockholders list shows that holders of 269,707,459 shares of common stock of the company are entitled to vote at this meeting. We are informed by the inspectors and judges of election that there are represented in person or by proxy 252,414,854 shares of common stock or approximately 93.58% of all of the shares entitled to vote at the meeting. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that there are present more than 50% of the outstanding shares of the company. The virtual meeting has therefore been duly called and lawfully convened under the company's bylaws and the requirements of Delaware General Corporation law for purposes of transacting such business as may properly come before it, and the quorum of stockholders is present. A copy of the notice, the proxy statement, and the form of proxies, as well as an affidavit of distribution of Broadridge Financial Solutions shall be made a part of the record of this meeting.
Finally, other than the stockholder pro proposal printed in the proxy statement, There are no stockholder nominations or proposals for business properly filed with me as the corporate secretary. The matters to be voted on at today's meeting as listed and described in the proxy statement are, one, to elect 10 directors named in the proxy statement related to this meeting. Two, to approve on an advisory basis the compensation of our named executive officers or say on pay vote. Three, to approve the JetBlue Airways Corporation's 2020 omnibus equity incentive plan. Four, to approve the JetBlue Airways Corporation 2020 crew member stock purchase plan.
Five, to ratify the selection of Ernst and Young LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending 12/31/2020. Six, to approve an amendment to the company's certificate of incorporation to provide stockholders with the right to request that the company call a special meeting. Seven, to approve an amendment to the company's certificate of incorporation to provide stockholders with the right to act by written consent. Eight, to vote on a stockholder proposal relating to stockholder approval of bylaw amendments if properly presented at the annual meeting. The polls for voting on all matters are hereby opened at this time, 09:09AM Eastern Daylight Time, 05/14/2020.
Any stockholder may vote at this time through www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/jblu20twenty. On behalf of the board of directors of the company, I would like to express my appreciation to all stockholders who return their proxies. The proxies solicited by the board of directors and the ballots cast will be tallied at one time, even though they contain several matters for consideration. You may now vote at any time until the polls are closed following the conclusion of the discussion of the items on the agenda. The first item of business is the election of directors to serve until the twenty twenty one annual meeting of stockholders and until such time as their successors are elected and qualified.
The nominees are one, B. Ben Baldanza. Two, Peter Bonaparte. Three, Virginia Gemball. Four, Robin Hayes.
Five, Ellen Dewitt. Six, Robert Ledoux. Seven, Terry McClure. Eight, Sarah Rob O'Hagan. Nine, Vivek Sharma.
10, Thomas Winkleman. No other persons having been nominated in accordance with the company's bylaws. The nominations are now closed. Are there any questions related to the election of directors? If so, please type in your questions now.
The second item of business is the approval on an advisory basis of the company's executive compensation as described in the proxy statement. Are there any questions related to this proposal? If so, please type in your questions now. The third item of business today is the approval of the JetBlue Airways Corporation 2020 Omnibus equity incentive plan. Are there any questions related to this proposal?
If so, please type in your questions. The fourth item of business today is the approval of the JetBlue Airways 2020 crew member stock purchase plan. Are there any questions related to this proposal? If so, please type in your questions now. The fifth item of business today is the ratification of the selection by the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of Ernst and Young LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending 12/31/2020.
Are there any questions related to this proposal? If so, please type in your questions. The sixth item of business is the approval of an amendment to the company's certificate of incorporation to provide stockholders with the right to request that the company call a special meeting. Are there any questions related to this proposal? If so, please type in your questions.
The seventh item of business is the approval of an amendment to the company's certificate of incorporation to provide stockholders with the right to act by written consent. Are there any questions related to this proposal? If so, please type in your questions. The eighth item of business today is a stockholder proposal regarding stockholder approval of bylaw amendments if properly presented at the annual meeting. Operator, please open Mr.
Line.
Hello. This is John Shiveden. Can you hear me okay?
We can hear you we can hear you well. Thank you, mister Shiveden. The proposal and supporting argument is contained in the proxy statement and is deemed submitted. Mister Chavetin, if you wish to make a statement in support of the proposal, please do so. You have four minutes for your presentation.
Proposal eight, let shareholders vote on bylaw amendments. Shareholders request that the board of directors take the steps necessary to adopt the bylaw that requires any amendment to the bylaws that is approved by the board shall be subject to a nonbinding shareholder vote as soon as practical unless such amendment already is already subject to a binding vote. The board of directors would have the discretion to determine whether a bylaw amendment is a housekeeping amendment and does submit housekeeping bylaw amendments from the application of this proposal. It is important that bylaw amendments take into consideration the impact such amendments can have on limiting the rights of shareholders and reducing the accountability of directors and managers. For example, directors could adopt a narrowly crafted exclusive form bylaw to suit the unique circumstances facing the directors.
A proxy adviser recently adopted a bylaw adopted a policy to vote against directors who unilaterally adopt bylaw provisions or amendments that, materially diminish shareholder rights. Please vote yes. Let shareholders vote on bylaw amendments proposal eight.
Thank you, mister Shibadden. For the reasons stated in the proxy statement, the board has considered this proposal and recommends a vote against the proposal. Are there any questions relating to this proposal? If so, please type in your questions now. Thank you, operator.
Please close the line. This concludes the introduction and discussion of the proposals for this meeting. We have received questions via the pre meeting portal. Thank you to the stockholders who submitted them. None were directed at the eight meeting proposals, so we will address them in the q and a session.
The vote is being taken on the foregoing eight matters presented at this meeting. There are any stockholders attending the meeting who have not already submitted a proxy and wish to vote their shares, you may do so now by clicking the vote here button on your screen. If you have previously provided your proxy card or voted online, your shares will be voted accordingly. If you wish to change your vote, you may do so now. The master ballot is being cast by the proxy holders.
Mister Chakowitz has provided me with the master ballot, which was cast by the proxy holders. Please note that this is the last call for votes. The polls for voting on the matters presented for a vote at this meeting are hereby closed at this time, 09:18AM Eastern Daylight Time, 05/14/2020. I've received the inspectors and judges certificate of the votes cast. The preliminary vote report is as follows.
Each of proposals numbered one through seven has received over 50% of the vote in favor. Accordingly, each of the directors nominated has been elected, and each of the proposals two, three, four, five, six, and seven have been approved. Proposal number eight, stockholder proposal asking the board to seek stockholder approval of bylaw amendments has received less than 50% of the vote, and the proposal is not approved. We expect to report our final voting results on each of the eight proposals on a current report on Form eight ks to be filed with the FCC within four days. Mister Hayes, back over to you.
Thank you, Brandon. The preliminary inspectors and judges' certificate of the votes cast is accepted and presented. Mr. Nelson, please safeguard the ballots, proxies, the inspectors' and judges' oath and inspectors' and judges' certificate and maintain them along among the records of the company. We thank all of our stockholders for their participation.
There being no further business, the annual meeting is adjourned. Brandon, over to you.
As a reminder, Mr. Hayes will now make some remarks on the business. After his presentation, there will be time for stockholder questions. I'd like to remind you that statements made today, which are not historical or current facts, are forward looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. They reflect management's current expectations or beliefs.
Future results could differ materially from those in this presentation depending on many risk factors, some beyond our control, including, but not limited to, those presented in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10 ks and other public statements made by the company and filings made with the SEC. The company disclaims any obligation to revise forward looking statements made today based on future events or information. Mr. Hayes, back over to you.
Thank you, Brandon, and thanks to all of our owners listening to the meeting and also to our crew members in our blue cities and support centers across the network, many of whom are also shareholders. I'd like to start by remembering with a very heavy heart the six crew members from our JetBlue family that we lost to the coronavirus in the past two months. Our hearts go out to their families, friends, and colleagues, and all of those who have been impacted by COVID nineteen. This pandemic has posed tremendous challenges for all of JetBlue's crew members. From the beginning, it has disrupted our lives as we have all been touched in some form or other by the coronavirus.
I also want to thank our crew members listening today who own JetBlue stock, including via the crew member stock purchase plan. Today, approximately half of our crew members are also owners of JetBlue, the highest participation rate in our industry. On a day like today, we would normally gather to discuss our many accomplishments during the prior year. It goes without saying that we are navigating the most difficult time in our twenty year history, not only for our company, but for our industry. We are living through an unparalleled time.
And although there is much to celebrate about our work from last year, today, we are intently focused on navigating the coronavirus crisis and taking actions to protect JetBlue for the long term. Just last week, we reported our results for the first quarter. And looking at the work we have completed in a very short space of time, I could not be more proud of our collective efforts to rise to the ongoing challenges. Since the start of the pandemic, we have focused our efforts on three fronts. First, protecting the safety of our crew members and customers.
Second, taking swift action to manage our liquidity. And third, working to set JetBlue up for future success. To ensure the safety of our customers and crew members, we have taken the lead in our industry to implement policies and programs that address the risks caused by the virus. As we look to the future and the day when people will begin to travel again, we are taking all the precautions necessary to bring back customer confidence in air travel. With that goal in mind, we are focused on safety from the ground up.
That includes healthy crew members, clean air and surfaces, more space, fewer touch points, and travel flexibility. In order to protect our liquidity, we have left no stone unturned to mitigate the current environment of virtually no demand. We have managed our network capacity aggressively from the very outset to eliminate nonessential flying as much as possible while ensuring compliance with the CARES Act and making sure medical personnel have access to critical air travel. We have worked closely with our business partners to reduce costs and capital expenditures across JetBlue. Our crew members have stepped up to participate in voluntary programs to help protect our company.
We know it is not easy, but we couldn't be more grateful for their sacrifice. We are pleased with our efforts to strengthen our cash position, which includes the proceeds of CARES Act payroll support funds from the U. S. Government. However, we do not know when demand will recover and we expect to explore additional opportunities to raise more liquidity in the debt markets over the coming few months.
To get ready for an eventual recovery, we have a lot of difficult decisions to take ahead of us. We're working to determine what the size and shape of JetBlue will be in the future. It is very likely that we will emerge as a smaller airline if demand does not quickly come back and that it will take a few years to get back to our size in 2019. However, looking to our work before the crisis started, we anticipate we will continue to focus on building relevance and getting stronger in our focus cities. That includes beginning flight to London next year as our first destination across The Atlantic.
It is the largest market we don't yet serve from Boston and New York. We also expect to move forward with the reshaping of our fleet, taking advantage of the incredible economics of the A321neo and the A220. In addition, we anticipate continuing to position ourselves as a trusted travel brand beyond their travel with our JetBlue Travel Products subsidiary. Our crew members' accomplishments from 2019 were remarkable and prepared us well to weather the current storm. We made excellent progress towards our financial commitments, improved our operation, invested in our product, and made great strides in our sustainability efforts.
Last year, we were also recognized with some two dozen awards, demonstrating that customers continue to embrace the JetBlue brand. However, we have a lot of work ahead of us and we are preparing for a number of recovery scenarios. We are being conservative and plan on being flexible and quick to adapt as coronavirus challenges unfold. As we look to recovery, we believe that we have an advantage to exit this crisis in a relatively strong position, given our predominantly domestic network, our low cost structure and trusted brand. Building customer confidence will likely be a critical part of the recovery, not just for JetBlue or the airline industry, but for the travel industry overall.
As a trusted travel brand, we believe our efforts to inspire confidence will help support our business' recovery. I want to emphasize again that we are putting in place all the work needed to preserve our balance sheet and liquidity position and withstand the current demand downturn. We remain laser focused on health and safety and taking actions to manage the near term challenges and headwinds. We believe that not only will we get through this crisis, but we will emerge as a stronger JetBlue. A big thank you to our nearly 23,000 crew members for their incredible hard work during 2019 and for continuing to live our mission to inspire humanity during this crisis.
A mission by the way, which has never been more important in our twenty year history. I'd also like to thank our shareholders for your continued support. Lastly, thank you to all of the healthcare workers, first responders, essential workers, and others supporting all of those impacted by COVID-nineteen.
With that, we'll take your questions. Thank you, Robin, for that review of the company. At this time, we would be happy to take questions from our stockholders. To help us use the time allotted for questions and answers most effectively, I would ask each of you to please limit the total number of your questions or comments to two. Other guidelines for the question and answer session are included in the rules of the meeting.
As indicated previously, if you have logged into the meeting and wish to ask a question, you may do so by typing your question into the box at the bottom of the screen. Please identify yourself as a stockholder or proxy holder. If you have previously submitted a question in a premeeting form, we will do our best to add those questions to the questions being submitted now. We appreciate those of you who submitted questions in advance of the meeting. Our first question, when do you think the stock will recover?
We have with us here Steve Priest, our Chief Financial Officer Joanna Garrity, our President and Chief Operating Officer. So for the first question, I will ask Steve Priest to respond.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to remind our shareholders that this corona pandemic is actually an industry event, and it's impacted not only JetBlue and our airline sector, but the whole of the global industry. Airline stocks obviously reflect many factors, including how we are managing in this environment of virtually no demand and zero revenues. It's obviously very hard to know when demand will recover, but with an intense focus on liquidity and cash burn, we are doing everything to protect JetBlue's financial health. Specifically looking at our stock performance, JetBlue has meaningfully outperformed our peers since the start of 2019.
In 2019, our stock was up almost 17%, outperforming our peer average by about 15 points. Since the start of 2020, our stock has outperformed our peer average by over 10 points. And since the the start of the 1Q twenty twenty earnings season over the last couple of weeks, our stock has outperformed our peers by an average of about 16 points. In terms of recovery, the stock price for JetBlue should recover when the prevalent conditions change. As I've said, we're doing everything we can to set up JetBlue for success when things do recover as they have in the past as we have navigated other challenges in the past.
Next, we have a two part question. The first one is regarding JetBlue's leadership team tenure and capability to manage JetBlue. The second part relates to the rationale behind JetBlue's stock repurchase program. Robin?
Thanks, Brandon, appreciate the question. This is a team sport and we have an amazing team of 23,000 crew members at JetBlue and everyone plays their part terrifically. And I'm so proud of all of them. I'm also extremely proud of the leadership team that we have. And if we look at how this leadership team has navigated this crisis, I've just been so impressed with how quickly that they have acted, how we've made had to make some difficult decisions quickly.
So I feel so honored to work alongside the team that I do, and I feel very lucky that they are part of the JetBlue leadership team. In terms of the part on the buybacks, as many companies as is true in this space, we maintain a balanced capital allocation. In fact, if you look at how much we've invested back in of our operating cash flow into JetBlue, it's over 70%, which is high and I think shows our commitment to reinvesting and to grow our business. We came into this crisis with the second strongest balance sheet in The U. S.
Airline industry, which is I think a tremendous achievement to the conservative way we have managed the company over the years. And even where we sit today, as we look at liquidity, we look at where we are, that strong balance sheet coming in is very important. It's what you come in with and that's how you act when you're in the crisis. And again, we're relatively well positioned to the industry. I think talks to even with the buyback, how conservative we've been and how much we've invested in our business.
Actually, if you look back over the last few years, my final comment is that we have returned a smaller portion of capital to our owners and share buybacks than most. And don't forget, most of our crew members are also shareholders and so benefit in terms of the earnings growth of buyback bring. So overall, I couldn't feel really good about where we are as we navigate this difficult pandemic. And of course, buybacks are now we suspended them and that is a requirement of the CARES Act for a period of time.
Thank you. Our next question relates to mergers and acquisitions. We have a question regarding M and A activity under the CARES Act legislation. Robin?
Yeah. Look, just so we're completely clear, we are 100% focused on JetBlue right now. That's all we're focused on. As I outlined earlier in my comments, our priority is on the safety of our customers and crew members, preserving our liquidity to make sure that JetBlue can navigate this period of almost zero demand. We're in our third month now of effectively zero or negative revenue.
And then work on restoring customers' confidence to fly again, which I think is an important part of our recovery. And that's where we're focused on and that's where this leadership team should be focused.
Thank you, Robin. We have a question regarding refunds, customer service, and ensuring the safety of our customers during this COVID nineteen crisis. Joanna?
Thank you, Brandon. So I'll take them in the order you read them. So first with regard to refunds, we currently provide refund for customers who are eligible for refunds. For those who purchased nonrefundable tickets, we were the first in the industry to announce a broad and flexible travel waiver program. You can find out more about that on jetblue.com.
If a customer cancels or needs to cancel their flight and they fall within the travel, waiver program, they would get a travel credit and would not be subject to change or cancel fees. And I'll also call out, with regard to the travel credit, we were the first in the industry to actually extend that credit, and it's now, a two year time frame for customers to use those travel credits. Turning to your question regarding customer service. First, I'm so proud of the remarkable work that our entire team from our in flight airports, our pilots, our customer support team on the customer facing side, and then our teams behind the scenes that support those who support our customers. They have been working tirelessly day in and day out in the face of some unbelievable circumstances on the front line and, frankly, all the fears and concerns that everybody has regarding the coronavirus.
We are so very proud of them. We've made a number of investments over the years in tools and technology. And with regard to specifically our customer support team down in Orlando and out in Salt Lake City, they faced extreme pressure in the month of March regarding just the sheer volume of cancellations and managed through that with elegance and grace. And I just wanna make a shout out for them. They're the best team in the industry, you cannot replace that personal element with how they manage through this unprecedented volume of cancellations.
Briefly turning to safety. We have led the industry throughout this pandemic, whether it was the launch of our flexible travel waiver program, the extension of the travel bank. We've led the industry in capacity cuts and ensuring that we were only performing essential flying. We've led the industry in flight caps to promote space and social distancing onboard the aircraft. We were the first to provide our crew members and customers with disinfection wipes to be used onboard the aircraft.
We were the first to require facial coverings across the board for our customers and our crew members. We've enhanced our cleaning. And this has all been focused on trying to protect our customers and protect our crew members. As we think about the future and restoring confidence in flying again as different shelter in place orders are lifted, our efforts have been combined to a program that we call safety from the ground up. It has four pillars, health and hygiene, clean air and surfaces, more space and fewer touch points, and flexibility, continuing at least into the short, if not the medium term.
Our approach is a layered approach from facial coverings to disinfection to reduced touch points to limited service onboard to extra space in the cabin to flexibility. And we feel that the layered approach and the combination of these steps, taken together, will allow customers to feel confident as their travel needs have to be fulfilled in the coming months. Similar to nineeleven, where the focus was on security, whether it was the creation of the Transportation Security Administration or the introduction of reinforced cockpit doors in the cockpit and other measures, Until there is a vaccine or a therapeutic treatment for the coronavirus, we will continue to lead the industry in a smart and a thoughtful approach so that we can help restore customer confidence in traveling again.
Thank you, Joanna. Our next question, how are you thinking about investments in your IT and digital infrastructure?
Robin? Sure. Thanks, Brandon. And also a shout out all of our IT and digital team for the tremendous progress that they made in 2019. I think about these investments in three main areas.
First of all, to stay sort of build more stabilization in our IT platforms to make sure that they are more resilient. And we continue to invest in that area in 2019. For example, we saw a large drop last year in reported IT issues. In fact, they were over 50% down and also a strong improvement in all of our uptime metrics. A number of our products were also migrated to cloud hosted solutions in 2019.
And we plan to continue that albeit slightly lower slower rate due to COVID-nineteen in 2020. And we're going to continue to operate with a hybrid methodology of both on premise and cloud hosting. The second area of investment and focus for us last year was bookings on our website. We're in the third year of our digital transformation program. And we continue to see really strong improvements in all of our website and mobile metrics and also direct booking share, which is really one of the highest levels that I've seen for years at JetBlue.
Our conversion rate has also increased. This is the sort of how many people come onto your site and then booking. I've never seen conversion rates really as high as I've seen them in 2019. And we also continue to see migration from our desktop to mobile channels. And in fact, over half of our customer searches now take place in mobile, which has been a really big change.
Think about additional investments, you can never sit still. You always got to look ahead and continue to reinvest. And we're actually in the process now of revamping our booking channel that offer an even better user experience and also improve further our capabilities to sell other ancillary products and support the high growth of our JetBlue Travel Products subsidiary. We've also started using online chat to assist customers. I even had a go at it myself briefly last year.
And it's a really, really good tool and our customers appreciate more ways of contacting us. And thirdly, the app experience where we continue to get really strong customer feedback. Don't take my word for it. It's a 4.9 in the App Store. And also number one in customer satisfaction amongst airline travel apps by J.
D. Power in 2019. So I think that talks to the improvement in our app as we went through 2019. Also, we've introduced app chat and been testing Apple Business Chat, which again, of our customers have really enjoyed. So look, outages and events like that always really frustrating.
We've worked very hard in 2019 to reduce that. We're going to continue to do that whilst investing in the digital footprint and the digital services that our customers can access.
Great. Thank you, Robin. Next question. Why is JetBlue not launching space trips like other companies such as Virgin Galactic? This would help raise money and let people know that we're gonna be here for the long term.
Robin?
You know, actually, that does align pretty well with, I think, our mission to inspire humanity. You know, I I it makes me think back to the beginning when JetBlue was founded by David Neelman and Dave Barger and the team were founders. You they had this crazy idea about putting TVs in the back of seats and everyone said it wasn't going to work. And here we are twenty years later and in flight entertainment really is now expected norm across the industry. I suppose space travel doesn't quite fit our area of expertise.
I would probably worry a little bit about its capital intensiveness. Our focus is on our fleet right now. But I commend those in this space who are thinking about how to kind of build that sort of space business. I just don't think it's fast. I will say though to our JetBlue Tech Ventures subsidiary, you know, we've got a a front seat at the table on a number of innovative companies that are either electrifying aviation through air taxes or regional jets and, you know, a lot of other innovative things we're seeing throughout Tech Ventures subsidiary, is also making JetBlue a much better company.
Great. Thank you, Robin. Next question. Why are we considering any executive compensation during this critical time period?
Again, I appreciate the question. You know, I think regarding compensation, the 2020 proxy statement that was went out a few weeks ago, several weeks ago, really that was a report on our 2019 compensation. So all of that largely predates the pandemic. The compensation plans that have actually been put up for stockholder approval this year really relates to our incentive comp plan and our crew member stock purchase plan that expire this year and next year and need to be replaced. And again, with the crew member stock purchase plan, I couldn't be prouder that we have the highest participation rate in the industry.
I think it really shows great alignment between our crew members and our stockholders. These compensation plans I just referred to, they have a ten year life plan. And when we come out of this pandemic, we clearly need to make sure that we have the compensation structures in place to pay our crew members. The entire company is contributing to cost saving efforts during this time. We've got leadership pay cuts across the board.
I know that many of our own crew members have taken less money home at the moment compared to last year. And we've had a large number of people, over half our crew members sign up for some form of voluntary paid time off. Those are very significant sacrifices. And I think the thing that differentiates us from many companies is that there's a real sense that we're all in this together, and there's a sense of shared sacrifice. In terms of exact compensation, because that quite rightly gets a lot of scrutiny, We've always been one of the lowest in The US industry.
This is something that shareholders and shareholder advisory services focus on quite rightly. We also supported actually some of the compensation restrictions that went in place in relation to the CARES Act as well, because I think that is very important for both shareholders and crew members that they see that. Our full compensation committee is monitoring things and, you know, they'll keep things under review as we go through this pandemic and through COVID-nineteen and, you know, can't rule out any further changes if things continue to worsen.
Great. Thanks, Robin. The only thing I'd add is, as noted in our proxy statement, the board declined its first quarter retainer fees as well, so they are participating. Next question. What is our turnaround strategy post COVID nineteen lockdown?
Joanna?
Thanks, Brandon. So I'd like to first start by saying that we've never seen anything like this. The industry has never seen anything like this. Customers are quite rightly concerned about getting on an aircraft, and the economic consequences that we've seen are are just extraordinary. The industry as a whole needs to play a leading role in health in making and getting customers comfortable traveling again.
And we do believe that there is pent up demand, and demand and recovery will not be just about what JetBlue is doing. It will be about confidence in the entire industry. For JetBlue, specifically, we believe that we have inherent advantages in our business model. First, our focus, as I outlined in the previous question, is about restoring customer confidence in traveling again and focusing on the things that we can do as JetBlue to allow for customers to be comfortable, our safety from the ground up program. And I won't get into the details since I already covered that in the other question.
With regard to the JetBlue business model, we believe that we have certain inherent advantages that will serve us well in any recovery. First, we're predominantly leisure. We believe that the international locations will be much slower to open up than domestic locations. We are predominantly domestic. We have a differentiated product.
We have the most space in terms of legroom and space in the aircraft, and we think that will be an advantage along with our friendly in flight crew providing service focused on inspiring humanity. We have a low cost model, and that will continue to provide us with a significant advantage as markets begin to open up. We also have narrow bodied airplanes. And finally, a trusted brand. And that will be key as customers, we believe, will want to fly with an airline that they can trust.
And that is where our brand, we believe, will have a significant advantage. So again, there's so much happening. We're staying very, very close to evolving customer sentiment so that when there are opportunities, we are in a position to take advantage of those opportunities.
Great. Thanks, Joanna. Next question. Where may I find information on the Board of Directors? I'll take that one.
In our proxy statement materials and also on our Investor Relations website, we have detailed information on all of our Board members. So thank you for that question. Next is a sort of three part question, the first of which I think we've already answered relates to stock performance. So we'll go to the second two. The second one relates to why is JetBlue investing in other business ventures beyond the airline?
And perhaps we'll ask Robin to respond. And the third one relates to shareholder concerns around our ability to manage through the pandemic. Respond. Robin, first part over to you.
Thanks, Brandon. And Brandon has given me the please hurry up, Robin, and let's get to all the questions. So I will be brief. In terms of the question, let me start with JetBlue travel products. As we outlined when we launched this a couple of years ago, we are predominantly a leisure airline.
80% of customers flying JetBlue are flying on non business travel. A good deal of those are spending money on other products when they get to their destination. And we capture a very low share of that. And frankly, than customers booking these JetBlue seats on online travel agents and paying them for hotels and car rental and travel insurance, we think we can do a better job both in terms of the offering and the service and the pricing. And by doing that, it will help JetBlue become more profitable and grow margins.
In terms of JetBlue Tech Ventures, again, that is about helping JetBlue be a better airline, either growing revenues or reducing costs. There are many examples. And if I had more time, we would get into them where we have taken innovations and ideas that we were trying to solve. Our Tech Ventures team has identified companies that can help us do that. And then we brought them back in JetBlue to help us be more innovative, which is why I think JetBlue is known around the world as a very innovative and forward thinking airline and TechVentures is a significant part of that.
And I'll take the third part of the question. So the airline industry is incredibly challenging. Over the past few years that we've outlined in this call in the past, we've had to navigate a number of pretty significant complexities, whether it's severe weather disruptions, hurricanes, earthquakes, air traffic control delays, aircraft delivery delays. And JetBlue has done a great job navigating and overcoming all these challenges while increasing our margins. And our path towards our financial commitments in 2019 and 2020 absolutely speak to that success.
Regarding air traffic control, as we've mentioned in the past, we operate in the most congested airspace of any U. S. Carrier. Over 70% of our flights touch congested airspace. So we've been spending a lot of time focusing our efforts on air traffic control reform and really focusing on how we can run a better operation.
We've led the industry in completion factor for the past several years for the number of flights completed. Very proud of this measure. Customers want to get to where they're going when they book a flight with JetBlue. And then regarding the pandemic, no one could have predicted that this would happen. And we can see the destruction this has brought, not only to JetBlue, but to the industry and people's lives and, frankly, the larger economy.
But we feel that the measures we're putting in place will position JetBlue well for recovery when it happens.
Next question. How will JetBlue make for a stronger balance sheet? Perhaps, Steve, over to you.
Thank you, Brandon. I know we've touched a little on the balance sheet, so I'll be brief. We came into the crisis with the second strongest balance sheet in the industry, as Robin talked about, having spent the last few years paying down our debt and really driving our margins. As we navigate this crisis, we're focused on three areas. Number one, preserving our liquidity number two, reducing our operating expenses and number three, managing our capital expenditures.
We started the year with good momentum with over $1,300,000,000 in cash, cash equivalents and short term investments on the balance sheet. As we closed April, we had $3,100,000,000 or 38% of our 2019 revenue. So we've been very active in terms of securing liquidity. We have applied for the Federal CARES Act loan of $1,100,000,000 but we are focused on raising liquidity in the sort of public and private markets over the next few months in addition to that.
Great. Thank you, Steve. We had another question on share buybacks in the post CARES Act environment, which I think we've answered. Just to underscore that we are in full compliance with the conditions set forth in the CARES Act and intend to continue to do so. Next question.
How many directors are there currently, and are are the alternatives among the list? So currently, there are 10 after today's election, and information on each director is in the proxy statement. Next question, which I think we've touched on, do we have an update on when and where JetBlue will fly to Europe? Maybe Joanna.
Sure. First and foremost, we are focused on 2020 and playing defense and managing through this pandemic. But we do know that as things start to recover, there are some areas where we will be able to play offense. This does include flying to London. We believe our low fares are exceptional service, particularly on transatlantic routes that are currently dominated by a handful of mega carriers that we're charging high fares, that more will be needed than ever before once markets begin to recover from the impact of the coronavirus.
We are still planning on taking deliveries of the A321LR, and we will be launching service into London, albeit the timing may shift a bit later than we initially planned as we continue to evaluate the program.
Great. Thank you, Joanna. Now the next question. In light of coronavirus industry wide impact on travel, revenue, stock value and even the company's financial obligations, all of which happened since the meeting documents were written and published, can we expect there will be either voluntary or involuntary compensation cuts or at least holds until things improve for senior executives, board members, and upper management. I think we've touched on most of this, but Robin, is there anything you'd like
to add? No. I think we have touched on it. As I said, all the board and leadership team have already taken significant pay cuts. I appreciate their sacrifice because in many cases, they've been working seven days a week, many hours a day since this crisis broke.
We'll keep it under review. We'll see how things play out, but I'm very grateful as to the sacrifices I've seen from all of our leadership team and indeed all of our crew members today. This has really been something that we're
all in together. Couple of additional questions and one comment. We'd like to get them all in. One comment, there's a thank you to Joel and Frank from a stockholder, so thank you for that. Next, should management be doing more to encourage mass transit access to JFK?
Robin, do you want to
take that one? Sure. We are definitely a supporter of that. In fact, when Governor Cuomo rolled out his vision for JFK a short while ago, we were very supportive of the concept of building a single seat ride to JFK. We know it's complex.
It's probably very challenging in the current environment, but it's something that we do support. And we're going to continue to make sure that we represent that to everybody. And, hopefully, one day, we will see better public mass transit and public transport options into JFK.
Great. Thank you, Robin. Last question. How many planes do you have, and how many of those are parked? Joanna?
Thanks. So we have 262 aircraft. A 170, approximately a 170, are currently parked.
Thank you. There being no further questions, this concludes the q and a portion. Thank you again for everyone who joined, and we will ask the operator to close the line. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation.
You may now disconnect.