JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty says the company expects to see the benefits in sales and cost efforts next year. Speaking exclusively to Bloomberg TV's Lisa Abramowicz inside the new JetBlue lounge at JFK airport, Geraghty says JetBlue has a lot of bookings coming in for the holiday season and the goal for 2026 is to break even on operating margin.
JetBlue Airways Corp. will launch its first airport lounge this month, part of the carrier’s push to court high-paying travelers and narrow the gap with larger rivals.
The new space, called BlueHouse, spans two floors at John F. Kennedy International...
1:22You have already offered Mint and other premium rollouts. How has it been going?
2:01How is it looking in terms of demand, given the fact that there were some hiccups in the past couple of months?
2:41How long do you think it'll take before you start to actually turn profitable and sustain that?
3:19Have you disclosed any kind of revenue loss as a result of some of the shutdown?
4:24I'm wondering how much you're hoping to attract a new class of customers versus capitalize on the ones that you have that might be willing and able to pay a little bit more with some of the new offerings?
5:07How do you sort of create a viable business model at a time when you do see this consolidation of profitability and travel in the biggest airlines?
Joanna, thank you so much for being here before the launch later this week. I want to start with just how this fits into the strategy of JetBlue right now to make the airline truly profitable for a sustainable period of time.
Yeah, thanks for the question. Great to be here. And have you in Blue House, JetBlue's first foray into lounges. This is very much part of our Jet Forward strategy. We've been working very hard for the last several quarters, really turning towards premium and trying to make sure that we're offering more opportunities for customers who want to pay a little more. The lounge, as part of that, our transition to a first class product next year, domestic first class product, will be part of that. Our premium card and even more as a cabin, and really excited to start seeing all of that come to life in 2026.
All of the big airlines have talked about loyalty and how important loyalty and premium offerings is to their profitability going forward. How is it different for JetBlue? Because there isn't this sort of obvious business customer that typically fuels the loyalty offering.
I mean, we're a leisure carrier. We tend to get a nice share of business customers because they love the product. We're back at the top for Net Promoter Score, so really proud of that. But at the end of the day, this is really designed around trying to make sure that customers who travel for vacation have a reason to come back again and again, providing a little oasis of peace. And through our loyalty program, we want to reward people who choose JetBlue because they love the product, the service, and what we offer.
It's been great. Mint has been a very strong source of revenue for JetBlue for well over the last decade. So we're not new to this. We have a brand that definitely associates with more of a higher-end leisure customer, providing more to customers at a very reasonable fare. We want to make sure that we offer something for everybody across the full spectrum, whether you want a dialed-down experience, still free, we have great legroom, great snacks and drinks, TVs. But then if you want to pay a little more, you have the opportunity for a lounge, Mint class for transatlantic, and then when we launch domestic first later this year, that's going to be a great product offering for customers who want a little more.
So I was shuttled into here through very long security lines and lots of people screaming children and trying to get to different destinations for their warm holidays. This is the busy season. How is it looking in terms of demand, given the fact that there were some hiccups in the past couple of months? But at this point, people are getting back to what they originally had.
2025 has been a very tough year, whether it was the macro setback or the government shutdown or the list goes on and on. We're really looking forward to the holiday season. Bookings are coming in strong as we go into 2026. We're optimistic that the consumer is healthy and that we're going to start really ramping up the initiatives that we have been working really hard for the last year to execute and seeing the benefit as we move through 2026.
Our goal next year is to break even from an operating margin perspective, and that's the first step back to profitability. We have a great team here. Everybody's pulling for us. We're doing all the right things, whether it's our focus on operational reliability, Net Promoter Score, all of the premium products that we're launching, our laser focus on costs, and really trying to make sure that we're delivering a great product offering for customers because JetBlue has this wonderful brand and this sense that people want to love us and they want to see us succeed. And 2026 is going to be our year with everything we've put into place, because 2025 was not the year for a lot of airlines. There were a lot of issues.
And you talk about the government shutdown. This has been a big discussion among a lot of the airline CEOs where they've said we just can't make up that kind of revenue. So there will be some sort of hit. Have you disclosed any kind of revenue loss as a result of some of the shutdown?
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Geraghty, J. (2025, December 16). JetBlue to Open First Lounge at New York’s JFK Amid Premium Push [Interview transcript]. Bloomberg Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/568549/
MLA
Joanna Geraghty. "JetBlue to Open First Lounge at New York’s JFK Amid Premium Push." Bloomberg Podcasts, 16 Dec. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/568549/.
BibTeX
@misc{geraghty2025_568549,
author = {Joanna Geraghty},
title = {JetBlue to Open First Lounge at New York’s JFK Amid Premium Push},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Bloomberg Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {dec},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/568549/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
