This is my first fireside chat of the day. I like the fireside format because you get to introduce me, right?
Yes.
No, you don't.
Whatever you say.
I'm here with Robin Hayes, CEO of JetBlue. Thank you for being here, as always.
Great, great tradition. I probably have the least far of everyone to come.
That is true. That is true. All right, let's start off. 8-K filed this morning. Why don't you just give us a quick update? How did the quarter develop? I know on a net basis, you're arriving where you expected to, but I know some of the moving pieces contributed to that.
Yeah. Yeah, no, thanks, Jamie, and good afternoon, everyone in the room, and hello to everyone on the webcast. We are being webcast, aren't we?
I believe so.
Yes. Great.
Your dime.
I mean, always. Yep. No, I mean, I think a good update this morning on revenue. We raised and slightly tightened the midpoint of our guide. You know, really, I think you've heard from others as we went through the quarter, once we got to that sort of Presidents' Day weekend, you know, we've seen good strength since then. We've also been running a good operation. I mean, we've definitely benefited from less snow in the Northeast and that's definitely been very helpful from a completion factor perspective.
And then also on the cost side, really, I think pleased with our sort of cost management in the quarter and also benefiting from a higher completion factor linked to the operational benefits. Now I've said that. We're probably gonna get snow and ice for the next two weeks. So far, so good. Offsetting that, obviously, we saw a meaningful increase in the fuel price for the quarter.
You know, one of the recurring themes today from other airlines in, you know, recent quarters has just been the changes in how people are flying. Traditionally, you didn't, and I think a lot of that change is sort of skewed towards differentiated behavior from corporate travelers. You were never quite as large in that area as others. What are you seeing differently with your demographic and how that demographic is behaving from a purchase and yield standpoint?
Yeah, no, great question. I mean, certainly, you know, we have seen the same, just touching briefly on the corporate travel comment. I mean, we have seen the same recovery as others, but, you know, clearly it's a smaller part of our mix. You know, in terms of the rest of the portfolio, I mean, I would say where we've seen strength in terms of leisure across all segments, so from price-sensitive to, you know, premium leisure and also VFR traffic, visiting friends and family, all of those are in our sweet spot. Those have been markets that have been performing really well, particularly Florida, particularly international into the Caribbean as well.
Okay. Let's talk about some merger stuff. Actually.
What merger?
Is there a third iteration that I have to brace for? Before we get to that, do you have any educated guess or practical information as to what is taking so long with the case for the Northeast Alliance? Our view had long been that this would be wrapped up early January, and that's obviously not happened. What's taking so long?
Yeah, no, honestly, you know, I don't know. I mean, the trial was fairly late September, you know, we're waiting to hear. You know, it doesn't really change anything in that we are operating the NEA today.
Of course.
In fact, I was reminded the other day that this summer we'll be entering into the fourth year since we signed the agreement. It was sort of took the best part of a year to actually implement. We'll be entering year four. Again, I think the benefits are there for everyone to see. JetBlue's never been bigger in New York. We've grown Boston because of the NEA, and we would like to be able to continue to do that.
I was at the ISTAT conference last week, excuse me. I was sitting next to one of my competitors, who I know is listening. When the news on DOJ broke, he or she and I, the name might rhyme with Ryk Binnenberg. No, Sorry, Mike. Anyway, we did remark to each other, you know, "Who is surprised by this outcome?" Of course, this was a step along the way. I do think everybody was caught off guard. I can certainly speak for myself in this case, as to the DOT weighing in, and perhaps my perception of DOT is flawed in a longer-term manner.
I mean, I wouldn't describe them as a rubber stamp regulatory body, but it didn't occur to me that this might be an issue. At a bare minimum, I think it speaks towards the administration's just sort of broader hostility towards M&A. What do you make of it? There's really no. This is one industry event that meaningfully predates my professional existence as it relates to airlines.
Yeah, no. thanks, Jamie. I think even I can guess you were talking about Mike Linenberg. Hello to Mike, if he's listening.
He is.
I mean, look, it is unprecedented. It's not something we've seen before. For the most part, you know, it's been settled now for a number of decades that DOJ would take the lead on this. By the way, I still feel with a lot of conviction that the biggest part of what we've got to get done is to win the case.
Yes.
That's what we're focused on. You know, on the DOT piece, we haven't actually seen what it is yet. You know.
Okay.
We've seen a press release. I've seen some TV snippets. You know, we haven't had any discussion on it. We haven't seen anything. I think, you know, I'll probably have more to say on it later, but I wanna see what it is. I mean, at the end of the day, the DOJ has one view, we have a different view. You know, a judge will now get to decide. We think that this deal is tremendously pro-consumer. If you look at into the DOT's own docket, there are thousands of, you know, letters and submissions of support, a very few against.
There's a lot of other people supporting that haven't necessarily commented yet. I personally think that we go to trial, we win the case. I think it's gonna be very difficult at that point for, you know, us not to be able to close the transaction. Anyway, let's see what DOT come out with, and then, you know, we'll be able to take it from there.
Well, in recognizing that there is ambiguity around DOT's current position, in an event where moving to a single operating certificate is delayed for some period of time, what does that disallow you from accomplishing? Because that's not entirely clear to me, and there seem to be several examples around the world of airlines that routinely operate with multiple operating certificates. Yet it's a single brand, single website, single loyalty program maybe there are certain dyssynergies behind the scenes. What does it preclude you from getting done?
Yeah, I mean, look, more common in the rest of the world than the U.S. I think a lot of that also links to some of the collective bargaining agreements around sort of some of the must-merge language around seniority. Look, I think again, there could be lots of hypotheticals around if you can't merge that as quick as you like. Are you running two airlines longer? What does that look like? I think we have to wait and see what the DOT actually comes out with, and we can decide how we wanna take that, you know, take that forward. At the end of the day, though, assuming we win the court case, we have a lot of conviction that we will because we think we have great facts that show how pro-consumer this deal is. It's in everyone's interest to close and get it behind it.
It's in labor's interest because the unions and our crew members wanna get on and get a new contract because that will mean better terms and conditions for everybody. Communities want to have certainty over service and things like that. Everyone wants certainty. I think at that point, the case is one. You know, I think there'll be a strong tide of how do we kind of now just get this closed as quickly as we can. You know, look, let's wait and see what the DOT come up with. I'm sure there's, you know, significant amount of due process behind what they are saying, and we'll work through that. Again, as I said earlier, our number one priority right now is to prepare for trial, litigate our arguments, and win the case.
Just to be clear, and I ask this question because it's one I'm fielding currently. If you prevail with justice in one way, shape, form, or another, are you prepared to close the deal while the DOT issue is still percolating?
Well, let's see. Again, I think it's gonna depend what the DOT issue is, right? There's the operating certificates. There's the unfair, y ou know, the unfair and deceptive practices piece has me confused 'cause what I've been hearing a lot from DOT the last few years is, you know, we should have more legroom, we should have less ancillary fees. JetBlue is the poster child for that. You know, I think there's no airline in the world, in my opinion, that offers the economy or coach traveler a better experience. You know, again, let's see what the DOT say. We will then, you know, engage and decide how we wanna take it, take it forward.
Let's shift gears to the international market, which is still the long-haul international market, Europe. That's the word I was looking for. Although Great Britain isn't part of Europe, as I was saying. Still can't find the right term.
We left, Jamie. We left. The pond.
Okay. I have not heard nor from your competitors nor have I seen any evidence, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, that your entry is proving to be disruptive. I do believe that disruptive is the term that you have often used to describe the JetBlue effect. Do you think you are being disruptive in that market? Is it performing up to expectations? What is your loss tolerance or loss duration tolerance in that market and other markets before you decide, let's cut and run, it's just not worth it? I am presuming that those are still money-losing markets because they are in their relative infancy, correct me if I'm mistaken.
Yeah, no. In terms of the comment on disruption, I definitely believe. From a fare perspective, we've been disruptive. I mean, if I look at the walk-up fares to London and before our entry and after our entry, I mean, they were down 50% in some cases.
Okay.
Now I think where we maybe have.
That's disruptive.
Maybe where we have less impact is, you know, with the delays of the aircraft. We just took delivery of our sixth long-range airplane. You know, we haven't been able to have the same reach that we had planned. Our ramp up's been slow. Look, you know, I mean, we are about to start here in a couple of weeks, our third daily flight to Heathrow. Who would have thought that we would end up with three peak slots at Heathrow?
I think it's been, you know, a tremendous opportunity for us. We're expecting, you know, yeah, for sure, the routes have been in ramp up, but we're expecting an incredibly strong summer over the Transatlantic. I think, you know, we should see these markets come into profitability here as we get into the summer.
Forgive me for not knowing the answer, but the peak slots that you've locked down, these are permanently yours?
They're either permanent or on long-term leases.
Okay. All right. That wouldn't be disruptive.
Yes.
Yeah, it's not the kind of disruption.
No, we're not about to lose one of these slots in the next you know, few years.
Right.
You know, again, the team have been incredibly creative how they've made that happen, because obviously, being a low-cost carrier, we weren't in the position to sort of pay money for slots.
Got it. Let's talk about the post-COVID environment because something that I admitted earlier, you know, today is that I occasionally go back and read my older research more just to kinda get a kick out of it. It's very difficult for me to read what I'd written in 2020 because it was basically all wrong. Things just did not play out the way that we thought it might at the industry level. You know, a consensus long, you know, for a good period of time was that discounters were just gonna inherit the earth and, you know, Southwest was gonna emerge structurally stronger and what have you. That's not what happened. The best margins these days are at the biggest carriers, not the smallest carriers.
As a bit of a tweener, for lack of a better term, I always had trouble framing JetBlue in one of those camps or the other. The question: Are you structurally in a better place today as a result of the industry, your own efforts, but also the industry turmoil that accompanied the downturn?
Yeah, I mean, I think, by the way, what did you say?
Better, worse, or the same?
What did you say in 2020 that was so wrong? I can't remember now.
Oh, well, at first I said corporate would come back before leisure. Well, we missed it. In my defense, we didn't understand the duration of the downturn. My thinking was you can easily tell, you know. I'm not comfortable taking this family vacation." It's tougher to tell your boss that you're gonna stand down, you know, and not gonna go on your sales call. Once we understood the magnitude of the downturn, I did lose quite a bit of Taco Bell currency with Bill Franke on this topic, but.
Oh, well. back to your question. you know, I would say that, you know, we feel confident that we can emerge better from the sort of disruption. I would say that. What, you know, what are the proof points? I mean, first of all, I think we've continued to progress a lot of our cost initiatives, particularly on the fleet side. It's frustrating that some of those changes are delayed with the delay. You know, we're still flying around more E190s than we had intended.
Some of those benefits are slow. You know, we're seeing that. We will end this year with 18 of the 60 E190s retired. Again, we wish two A220s were arriving at faster rate. I think, you know, from a cost side, continue to be really pleased with the progress we're making there. Then on the revenue side, I mean, some really unique JetBlue tailwinds that I think are things that we had started pre-COVID and then really accelerated. I think, you know, we talked about the NEA, but one of the other benefits of the NEA is really helping transform our loyalty program. You know, if you look at the 'cause we, you know, as we said before, we have a structural disadvantage. I mean, no one is surprised by that versus.
the legacy airlines, but we are closing that gap, and the program is growing very quickly. The co-brand program is growing very quickly, on the JetBlue Travel Products. I mean, we have a business there that was $15 million of EBIT in 2019 and is got a runway of about $100 million now. Again, we've really with very little capacity increase to support that. you know, I think, you know, very pleased with those changes. I think if you think about where the industry is coming out of COVID, which is leisure strong across all segments. Business, you know, we say 80% recovered. It's really 60% recovered, isn't it? Because you can't forget the 20% of GDP growth that goes between 2019 and 2022.
We forgot.
Yes, yes. You know, like, it's great that you say it's 100% recovered, but that's like saying business travel would have been flat.
Right.
It, and it wouldn't have been. You know, again, we're gonna continue to see that. I think business travel has changed. What we see is the type of business travel, I don't know if folks in the room would agree, it's those day trips where, you know, you used to get up at 6:00 AM, you're back at 8:00 PM, you go for one meeting. Just not gonna do that anymore. You know, you're gonna jump on, you're gonna make yourself a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, have a nice leisurely morning, take in a few calls, do the one-hour Zoom call, and then be, you know, be home.
We're seeing that trend, and I think that's here for good. We're having to re-pivot some of our network choices around that, too. You know, we came in with 15 Boston LaGuardias. We thought that was a great idea. Turns out it wasn't. That's now gonna be nine or 10 as we get later into the year.
Well, how does that relate back to the Mint product? I mean, if the nature of corporate travel is forever changed, as I think most generally expect it to be, does that make you rethink configuration efforts, pricing efforts? Where does that lead Mint? Because obviously Mint predate, you know, that was intended to be your foray into meaningful corporate, you know, medium to longer haul.
Yeah. I mean, really what's always fueled Mint for the most part is the sort of premium leisure segment. We definitely do have corporate travel in there, but we don't have any, you know, we don't have any concern about replacing that with business travel, with the premium leisure travel. You know, it's interesting, Jamie, you know, you're an av geek. You know, I when we were having the debate about the configuration for the Mint airplanes, the domestic ones, we ended up with 16 because of the door two.
Of the A321. You know, there was quite a few of us who said, "Oh, can't we just put a seat there? You know, or go past the door and carry on?" You know, it was, it was a bit hard to do. If anything, we kind of undersized the cabin a little bit. Plus again, the delays in airplanes. I mean, we should have more Mint airplanes than we do. No, actually, Mint, premium leisure and Mint continues to be one of the better performing parts of our portfolio.
Getting back, just to follow up to what you were saying about JetBlue's positioning as you emerge from COVID. I think this is a fair question to ask because the ink has now dried, but did you ever envision pilot economics, pilot wages going to the level that they have now gone? I mean, was that part of your thinking during the downturn?
No. I mean, you know, I think, I remember being in 2020. The biggest concern for pilots were, you know, are we gonna have a job? You know, like, we were all sitting there saying, "When is this coming back?" To see the turnaround, it's been remarkable. You know, I think the great thing about this is that it's created a lot of interest in the pilot career. Again, it's tempting people into the profession. You know, for 15, 16 years, it was hard sometimes for pilots to recommend being a pilot, to sort of an aspiring middle schooler, you know, unless you loved aviation, because it was really hard.
It was not well-paid. I think that that has been terrific. You know, I'm very proud of our team's efforts. You know, there's been a lot of talk about the pilot shortages. In 2016, we started a program to bring and train our own pilots. We now have, I think, about 800, 900 pilots who are out on the line or in training who have come through one of these programs, including one, by the way, where if you join JetBlue and work for JetBlue for a period of time, we will train you or your family members to become pilots. It's really part of our sort of embracing our culture and giving people within the company access to opportunities that they haven't always had.
You know, and by the way, as these pilots come into the line, the attrition is so much lower than pilots that we're hiring from outside. Look, the cost, you know, the cost increases clearly create challenges because it's a significant part. You know, I think the, you know, what we will all see over the next, you know, several years is just this big influx again of people coming into the profession. I think that's terrific, because when I grew up, aviation was one of the coolest things you can do, and I think we wanna, we wanna do that again.
The consensus on the pilot shortage, and there are various ways to describe or define the shortage, but consensus seems to be around it's sort of a three-to-five-year phenomenon before it's solved for. Over or under on that?
No, I agree. I mean, I think, you know, it's not a switch that sometimes it's.
Of course.
You know, it'll continue to get worse for a little bit, then it will start to get better. You know, we all have different views as to, you know, how quickly you get to that point. You know, I do think some of the aircraft constraints and some of the training constraints has limited some of the sort of pilot hiring that could happen. My view is, you know, it's gonna peak, you know, probably early next year and then start to ease. I say we've, as I said earlier, you know, we've taken certainly some of this into our own hands with these programs. I mean, the pilots we kind of started in 2016, 2017, they've now been flying the line for two, three years.
We've got, you know, hundreds of pilots coming out every year from some of these programs. You know, and I think it's great. You know, you can go to high school, you can join JetBlue, you can work at the airport, and then three years later, we'll train you and your sister or your mom or dad to be a pilot. I mean, it's just, it creates a fantastic cultural opportunity within our company.
Last question on the pilots, and I wasn't going to ask this, but I was a little bit surprised, and we discussed this earlier today. Part of Spirit's updated guide for the first quarter was that they underestimated some of the incremental pilot expense, which surprised me a little bit because I just thought you know, you take the new contract, you drop it into a spreadsheet. It, y ou know, I was surprised they missed. They spoke to that. Is there any risk of that? Are you finding that the economic impact of the now ratified deal is driving anything different in terms of the costs that you had assumed?
No.
Okay. Yeah, fair enough. Straightforward. Back to the merger for a moment. When I think about airlines that have deep benches with significant consolidation experience. I just don't think of JetBlue, but I don't know everybody. Actually, I would probably put Southwest in front because they have a very storied career with consolidation over their history. Yet, even they struggled with the AirTran integration, and they were supposed to be pretty adept, you know, going in. Integration always seems to be harder than what people plan for. I mean, what gives you the confidence? Are you looking for examples outside of your franchise for best practices? You have not. You've grown something from scratch, but you have not mated.
Yes.
For lack of a better term.
Yes. We're waiting to mate.
Waiting to mate.
No, I mean, it's a great question, and two things. You know, as we came into this year, as a team, we said, you know, we've got two main priorities. In addition to, you know, we wanna run a safe.
Yeah, of course.
Secure operation. By the way, you know, we can never take that for granted, as we've seen over recent weeks and months. You have to be very focused. We wanna execute really well in 2023 on our organic plan, and we wanna prepare for the merger with Spirit. What we did in our company is we've really separated out the responsibility of those things. We have a team that's entirely focused on running 2023. We have a team that is focused on integration. That team consists of some JetBlue folks.
Okay.
People that we've hired that have been through this. We have hired consultants and some of those external consultants who, some of which have worked on hundreds of integrations and some with aviation experience. We've also have access to, and I won't name them, but people that you would know who have been through this, other U.S. mergers in the last five to 10 years. You know, the challenge I've given our team is, you know, I want. You know, I think it's right for us to aim high and say, we want the most seamless integration in airline history. If there's any good news about some of the regulatory timelines and now we've gotta go to court and make the argument there, is this is giving us more time to.
True.
Get ready for, all of these, changes. We've also made some decisions early. I mean, we've been very clear it's gonna be the JetBlue brand. We have a single fleet type. We're gonna retrofit the fleet. You know, we're not sort of saying, well, let's, y ou know, remember when we went through the, o bviously, we were unsuccessful versus Alaska Airlines, but, you know, that brand question with Virgin was out for a while. We kind of took that off the table. You know, we've already started conversations with some of the unions and some of our own values committees about processes around that too. Look, it's not a perfect process.
It's extremely difficult, but I think we set it up well so that our team is not distracted from what we gotta do in 2023, and we're making sure that we've resourced the integration management office with people who've got experience doing this. By the way, I would say JetBlue, I would say, you know, I would say, I mean, I think Southwest is a terrific airline. They have a lot of people that have been there for a long time. I actually think JetBlue tends to hire more from different airlines, so we probably have more of that experience than you, than you think. You know, we have executives with us, they've worked for American, some have worked at United, some of which have worked for Delta. you know, I think we've hired some really, good people in the last couple of years.
'Cause I mean, you have to admit, as mergers go, you know, Delta and Northwest did the same thing for a living. Yours is an assimilation of a differentiated model into your own unique model. What I can't decide is whether that makes it easier or more difficult to merge.
Yeah, look, I think they've all got their own challenges, you know, I mean, we don't have the fleet challenges that perhaps a Delta and Northwest have. You know, Spirit have been, by the way, terrific partners in this. When I talk about integration management office, it's with the Spirit team members and their leaders too. Things we can talk about, things we can't. You know, we make sure the lawyers guide us very clearly on all of that. No, I think that, you know, as we work through it, you know, we're just gonna stay very focused on that. You know, I think that the fleet commonality is, I think a big piece of what made us interested in this deal. 'Cause we've we know how to retrofit airplanes. We've just been through that.
Fair point.
We know how to hire people. I mean, we just hired 7,000 people last year. you know, Then there's all the other blocking and tackling that you have to do.
Back to the standalone franchise. You reiterated your full year guide today, somewhere between a $0.70 and $1 profit. Maybe it's a question for your finance team or, you know, for Joe, because I, I doubt you spend any time at all looking at.
Try me. Try me. Let's see.
At sell side models. The Street is not. The level of prosperity that you are guiding towards. What do you think is the biggest differentiating factor there?
Well, I mean, if I think about the sort of three big variables, I think on costs, I think, you know, off to a strong start on ex-fuel CASM and, you know, under Ursula's leadership, we're very focused on that this year. I think we had a good track record coming into COVID. I think, you know, in the last, you know, couple of quarters, we started to pick up where we left off. On revenue, I mean, again, pleased with Q1. I mean, let me put it like this. For us to hit our annual revenue guide, which we did not touch today, RASM has to be flat or slightly down for the rest of the year.
Okay.
You know, I think our TRASM for the first quarter was, like, 23% to 24%, roughly where we are. I think that's believable.
That is the easiest comp of the year, though.
Yeah. No, that's true.
You know, we're comping a COVID quarter.
True. To go then flat to down for the rest of the year. I mean, I mean.
Fair point.
I think that's a, you know, a believable goal. I think fuel, you know, fuel is the unknown. You know, as you saw today, we started to step in a hedge, slight tiptoe into hedging a little bit just to kind of try to protect that plan from rising fuel.
Right. Looks like my colleague, Mark Streeter, in the front row may have a question. Let's see if you can ask the question without using the word sheet or balance.
I will.
Okay.
I'm more than a one-trick pony, Jamie.
I know.
Robin, you first announced the bid for Spirit in April. You reached an agreement in July. Here we are nine months later. I think about what's changed since then. The revenue environment is a lot stronger. There's been an awful lot of inflation. I know you put bridge debt in place, but when you think about permanent financing. Obviously there's give and takes. Whichever way you and your management team view the accretion or value creation or whatever the metric is of the deal for Spirit. Is it higher or lower now than when it was when you signed the paperwork?
Yeah. Actually, it's a good question. I forgot when you asked me earlier. One of the other roles that we've created during this integration process is head of someone who's solely focused on value creation for the IMO, for the merger, because things change all the time. You know, financing costs go up, revenue assumptions change, pilot deals come and go, and we need to make sure that we are fully on top of all of those changes. Because I fully appreciate the history of these mergers is, you know, tends to be they get there in the end, but they tend to disappoint for the first two or three years. You know, we're very focused on delivering the commitments that we've made. You know, we're very focused on that.
Clearly, there's been some changes in some of those lines. I mean, we were pretty conservative with some of those value creation numbers that we shared, because we didn't obviously wanna put everything out there 'cause we always knew there would be some things that perhaps didn't come in as we expected. You know, I think we, you know, on the higher interest rates, you know, we still have, you know, we have time. I mean, this transaction is still not gonna close here probably for the next few months. Then we have a lot of, you know, flexibility with the takeout financing and again, significant margin and flexibility to make sure we can still deliver the benefits, even if we're in a higher interest rate environment.
You didn't answer my question, so I'm gonna redirect and just say that number when you signed the paperwork at the end of July last year, if we were to just put a halt on it today and look at where you.
Yeah, we haven't changed it.
You still think your accretion analysis? Your number is flat? It's not better, worse? It's the same.
Right now we assume it's approximately the same to what we said when we announced the deal.
Interesting. Thank you. Any questions from the floor? It's been a shy audience.
Really?
Today. Yes. I have one more.
There's one over there.
Oh, that's terrific. We'll go to that first.
Let's see. I was just looking to ask you about your fuel assumptions. Crack spreads, some of the issues in New York, where you see that going toward the end of the year?
I mean, we don't, Ursula, please correct me. I don't think we see any relief in the New York Harbor issue anytime soon, unfortunately. You know, as I mentioned earlier, we stepped into hedging particularly over the sort of the prompt quarter to try to de-risk at least the, you know, part of that pricing construct. I wish I had a better answer. I mean, it's frustrating for us, believe me, when our fuel guide is always higher than everybody else's. Another plug for the merger, because we'll have a more national geography, and we will be able to bring down our average fuel price too.
Robin, just wanted to follow up on, you mentioned, you know, some delays in getting some of the long-range aircraft. From Airbus. Are you any sort of sense of confidence given your latest guidance on CapEx and delivery schedule? What you've most recently said, you know, we heard earlier there were some updates given from Airbus at year-end, you know, still waiting to see when the next update would come. Where do you stand in terms of your confidence level?
You know, we have an assumption around 2023 of 19 airplanes coming. Obviously, quite a few of those are coming in December, so we'll see if they actually come in December. Then, you know, I think we're working with Airbus now to get sort of better clarity over 2024. I mean, my sense is that, you know, 2024, we're gonna continue to expect delays to aircraft that are coming in. It's just a question of, you know, is the trend getting better? Is it the same or is it worsening? Hopefully, getting better as we get into 2024.
How many of the 19 are in December? Just curious.
I think it's a few, right? three ? four?
Three or four. Okay. 19 could become 15 pretty easily, though, for this year.
Hopefully not. I'm sure hopefully Airbus wanna gets.
Ursula is shaking her head.
Hopefully, Airbus wants to get the money wired by December 31. Yeah, clearly they could slip into the following year. Look, it's, it's been challenging. By the way, I do wanna give a shout-out to Pratt & Whitney, who have been actually terrific partners in managing some of the engine delays with us at the moment. You know, it's hard. It's a great engine. It's gonna take some time. Longer than we expected, I think, to work through some of the issues. You know, right now we're sort of blessed with no airplanes on the ground and, you know, hopefully, you know, we have had airplanes, planes on the ground, but they've been good partners as we work through that.
Most of your competitors have thrown them under the bus today.
Yeah. Well, I didn't know that, but I'm not gonna do that.
Because I, you know, they're visible. We spend time with their engineering team, not just their sales team. You know, what they do is they do their best to project for us, you know, when engines are gonna come off the wing. We have time to think through what that means. You know, for Dave Clark, who does the network, if he knows that we have a period of risk coming up where we may be two or three AOG, he can pull down the schedule proactively to minimize crew costs, to minimize disruption. Now, they don't have perfect line of sight, but they know it better than we do. I think that is, I'm very appreciative of that. We want that to continue.
Excellent. Any other questions before? Yeah, one in the back.
Sidestep.
There's a mic coming. Yeah.
Steven Udvar-Házy said that the Geared Turbofan is actually more expensive to run than the V2500 because of its short on-wing life, combustor problems. It saves more fuel, but the maintenance costs offset that. Are you finding that?
We have a flight hour agreement on the on that engine, so there is the disruption in terms of it coming off wing more often. We have, you know, we have certainty over on the cost side.
That's great. I think that's all we have time for. Thanks, Robin. Thank you.
Robin, thank you very much.
Thank you.