JetBlue Offering To Pay Pilots Not To Fly

JetBlue is clearly planning some significant capacity cuts in late summer and early fall, to the point that the airline is offering to pay hundreds of pilots to volunteer not to fly.

JetBlue’s offer for pilots who volunteer to stay home

I recently wrote about how JetBlue is offering flight attendants unpaid leave for the coming months. This comes as the airline plans to reduce its flying schedule for the fall due to industry overcapacity, plus the airline is cutting staffing on some transatlantic flights.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not just flight attendants who are being asked not to work, but also pilots. However, pilots are being offered a much sweeter deal. @xJonNYC reports how JetBlue is offering pilots 50-hour no fly lines for their September bidding, with this being available to over 500 pilots.

For context, pilots at JetBlue are paid by the hour, and they can ordinarily fly up to 1,000 hours per year, which averages out to ~83 hours per month. However, most pilots don’t fly quite the maximum, so pilots are ordinarily guaranteed pay for 70-75 hours per month.

With these no fly lines, pilots can bid to be paid for 50 hours to just stay home. In other words, pilots would get about two-thirds of their usual pay, while not actually having to do anything.

JetBlue currently has roughly 5,000 pilots, so 500+ no fly lines suggests that JetBlue expects needing roughly 10% fewer pilots than usual for September. If this is being offered in September, I imagine we’ll likely see this in some other future months as well (probably not November or December, but maybe October, and definitely January and February).

This isn’t a great situation for JetBlue…

As I always say, the airline industry is incredibly challenging. Even under the best of circumstances, it’s low margin, it’s difficult to renegotiate labor contracts, fixed costs are very high, and it’s hard to adjust capacity to reflect demand.

While the “big three” US carriers have been doing okay, it’s a different story for other US airlines, which haven’t been able to capitalize on strong premium leisure demand, long haul demand, and lucrative credit card contracts related to frequent flyer programs.

JetBlue’s management team is doing everything it can to turn around the airline and cut costs while increasing revenue. I can appreciate the desire to cut capacity in hopes of airfare increasing, but that’s probably also not great for JetBlue’s bottom line:

• Paying pilots to stay home and not generate any revenue is bad for margins
• Not flying planes efficiently, and instead keeping some of them grounded, also isn’t great in terms of maximizing revenue

Now, it might still be the lesser of the evils here. But when you’re not making money in the first place, this probably isn’t going to exactly lead to profitability.

Bottom line

JetBlue is expecting to cut capacity in late summer and fall, as many airlines are. As a result, the airline has more flight attendants and pilots than it needs. In addition to offering flight attendants unpaid leave, the airline is also offering pilots roughly two-thirds of their usual pay to just stay home in September. JetBlue hopes that roughly 10% of pilots take advantage of that, which tells you just how deep the capacity cuts will likely be.

What do you make of JetBlue’s offer to pilots?