JetBlue Slashes Schedule After Another Awful Weekend
JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU) entered 2022 with plans to rapidly ramp up flying to capitalize on an expected surge in travel demand. Unfortunately, the company's ambitions outran its ability to execute. A combination of bad weather, tight staffing, and overly optimistic planning has forced JetBlue to cancel a huge number of flights this month, to the dismay of its customers. Now, the airline is responding by significantly reducing its schedule for the next several months. Let's take a look.
In January, JetBlue told investors that it planned to increase capacity by 11% to 15% this year compared to 2019. Given that the company's first-quarter forecast called for capacity roughly in line with 2019 levels, this projection implied 15%-plus capacity growth beginning in the second quarter.
However, JetBlue began the year with roughly the same number of employees as it had two years earlier. Its flight attendant ranks actually shrank over that period: JetBlue reported having 5,055 full-time equivalent flight attendants as of Dec. 31, 2019 but only 4,833 as of Dec. 31, 2021.
Source Fool.com
