Mere hours after Spirit Airlines shut down last weekend, JetBlue Airways announced more than two dozen new flights out of Spirit’s home airport.
JetBlue’s speed in filling the void was not surprising. The airline is trying to turn itself around after years of losing money. JetBlue wants to make Spirit’s base — Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, near Miami — the next pillar of its business, and seized the opportunity to attract thousands of travelers suddenly left in the lurch.
Once celebrated as a hip, disruptive upstart, JetBlue has fallen on hard times. The company has shrunk somewhat in recent years to under 5 percent of domestic air travel, making it about one-fourth as big as the country’s largest airlines.
As a result, it is not big enough to compete head to head with American, Delta, United or Southwest. And its costs are too high to pursue the low-fare approach popularized by Spirit and others. That leaves JetBlue in a difficult situation: It needs to grow, but it has few easy or good options.
“It is the most uncomfortable place in the world,” said John Grant, chief analyst at OAG, an aviation data provider. “You don’t know where you’re going and how you can compete.”
From 2019 to 2025, JetBlue’s operating costs rose almost 29 percent as it matched industrywide raises handed out to pilots and other employees and paid more in airport fees. But its revenue climbed just 13 percent. The airline has lost money every year since 2019 and has about $8.5 billion in debt.
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