Devoted Globe readers may remember that I recently wrote Marty an open letter urging his airline to do better. I noted that the interior of the plane I flew on was dreary and outdated. I described the plane as rattling through the air like an MBTA bus with wings, and I noted that JetBlue, which has the worst on-time performance of any major airline and was last in The Wall Street Journal’s annual ranking of airlines, has been losing money every quarter since the pandemic began.
In retrospect, that certainly sounds negative, but I begged Marty to do whatever he could to make things right. JetBlue literally means the world, or at least the country, to Boston, serves more places nonstop than any other airline, and has a sensibility that is sometimes bold, innovative, and fearless, and very much like ours. Please, I begged, give Boston the airline we want and need, the airline that was yours. Show me the plan.
I didn’t actually ask to see his plans, but the day after the column was published, I got an email from JetBlue headquarters saying Marty wanted to meet with me. So we were left alone, just me, Marty, and two tough JetBlue executives, with a lot of hard feelings to sort out.
Marty then began, “You’re right. There’s nothing in that letter that I disagree with.”
got it.
In short, St. George said JetBlue leaders are proud of their company but fully aware that there is work to be done, they also believe wholeheartedly that they can right the wrongs, and they are committed that Boston will remain absolutely central to the airline’s future.
“That’s why I came back,” he said. Marty St. George, a Hingham native who now splits his time between Boston and New York, is a JetBlue devotee. He joined the airline in 2006 and rose to executive vice president and chief commercial officer before leaving in 2019 to hold senior positions with a European airline and then a South American carrier. He returned to JetBlue as president in February, per new CEO Joanna Geraghty.
He was somehow different in the room than I expected: slightly tousled hair, perpetually cheerful, and passionate about flying and what it means for people to get on a jet and see the world.
“I love JetBlue,” he said. “I love people. I love aviation. There are 8 billion people in the world struggling to get along with each other. Our job is to show people the world. If we all understood each other a little better, everything would be better. We’re in the business of bringing people together.”
It’s a noble and honorable thing to do, of course, but the questions remain: How do you start attracting people to fly on cleaner, more modern planes that run on time? How do you restore profitability so that the airline doesn’t feel like it’s in constant decline?
In response, St. George said there is no magic answer or secret strategy, but rather a classic method that, in his words, is “three yards and dust.” He said that first and foremost, there is new management that brings fresh ideas and high standards. He said that the airline plans to increase service to Logan Airport while cutting flights to other cities with lower profit margins. He also said that the airline is in the process of mothballing all of its aging Embraer 190 regional jets and replacing them with brand new Airbus A220s that can carry more passengers using less fuel.
But — and this is important — nearly all of JetBlue’s Embraer fleet flies through Boston because that’s where its flight crew is based, and the last Embraer plane won’t be retired until the end of 2025, he said.
“We can’t get new planes fast enough,” he said.
I asked him if Boston was as important to JetBlue as JetBlue was to Boston, and he answered emphatically: Yes.
“Boston is crucial,” he said, “and we’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished here. It’s been an underserved market for many years, but we have the data to show that we’ve lowered fares across the board.”
JetBlue’s biggest challenge, he says, is existing in this netherworld between low-cost carriers and the big, established airlines. Despite its disruption in markets like Boston, it’s still nowhere near the scale of Delta Air Lines, which is neck and neck with JetBlue for the majority of passengers at Logan. And now, St. George acknowledges, Delta and United are catching up on some of JetBlue’s innovations, like seat-back TVs and free Wi-Fi.
As a result, he said, the company will double down on its commitment to passengers.
“We’re a small company going up against a big company,” St. George said. “It’s tough to be the small company in this industry. The only way you’re going to succeed is by making the industry better.”
“This is a Dunkin’ Donuts company,” he said, quoting a passage from a letter I wrote to him comparing JetBlue to Dunkin’ Donuts and Delta to Starbucks. “We’re a challenger brand. Nobody makes Boston a priority. For us, it’s a priority.”
Asked how JetBlue has declined from its heyday, he said the airline was hit especially hard by the COVID-19 travel downturn and by its failed acquisition of Spirit Airlines, which many industry experts have always questioned. St. George was not with JetBlue at the time.
He pushed back against the notion that JetBlue is no longer innovative, pointing to its Mint premium section on long-haul routes and new flights from Boston and New York to European capitals on narrow-body aircraft that have lower operating costs. “No other airline has a better economy class than we do,” he said.
St. George escorted me from my windowless room through the terminal to the new gate, where we boarded one of their new A220s and I can confidently say I was blown away. This wasn’t the JetBlue I’d flown before, but it was the JetBlue of old and what St. George is trying to be again. The plane shone bright white with blue accent lighting and sharp gray leather seats, modern, clean and inviting.
St. George proudly and restlessly walked around the plane, checking out the legroom, the quality of the seats, the size of the overhead bins, etc. As I deplaned, I was more convinced than ever that Boston needed JetBlue. St. George made it very clear that JetBlue needed Boston.
For everyone’s sake, let’s hope that the journey to a better airline encounters little turbulence and arrives on time.
Brian McGrory is a columnist for the Globe. He can be reached at brian.mcgrory@globe.com.
