JetBlue Accelerating Technology Advancements

ATLANTA—While proceeding through a multi-year plan to return to profitability, JetBlue Airways is advancing its adoption of new technologies.

“We’ve been a little bit slow, admittedly, to the technological advancements of the last five, six, seven years but have been accelerating that very recently,” said Dave Marcontell, JetBlue VP-Technical Operations, at Aviation Week Network’s MRO Americas in Atlanta. As part of this, the LCC is starting to use artificial intelligence (AI) in certain areas of the business. It is also utilizing advanced solutions to maintain the health of older airframes in its fleet, as the carrier extends operation of some Airbus A320ceos in the wake of previously announced delivery deferments.

On the operations side, AI is being used in JetBlue’s Systems Operations Control center, helping to reaccommodate passengers during disruptions and make decisions about things like hoteling and cancellation packages, Marcontell said. On the maintenance side, the LCC is preparing to roll out its first round of “chat bots” this summer, seeking to simplify information retrieval from lengthy manuals and to support problem-solving.

“I’ve seen some of the actual working demos, and they are really, really full in terms of how technicians can enter in a fault code message from one of the maintenance computers, or even speak into it, and it starts regurgitating—in a very condensed form—all of the troubleshooting information needed,” he said, pointing to Minimum Equipment List references and links to the Aircraft Maintenance Manual as examples.

Helping to upskill and reach a younger, less experienced workforce was one application of AI highlighted by industry experts at the conference in Atlanta. In JetBlue’s case, only 50% of its technician workforce has been with the company for more than six years, and 35% have been at JetBlue for less than three.

“The net result is they don’t have that ‘tribal knowledge,’” Marcontell said. “They’ve never seen it. And yes, it’s in the manuals, in the thousands and thousands of pages of manuals that we have—which are all necessary—but the key is, how fast can I get to the right source, to the right information, and then be able to act upon it?”

AI and large language models are “revolutionizing the game on that,” he said.

Meanwhile, to confront the effects of aging systems on aircraft, JetBlue has “had to be creative,” Marcontell said. The carrier operates 263 in-service aircraft, according to the Aviation Week Network Fleet Discovery database, airframes that have an average age of 12 years. Nearly five dozen of its Airbus A320ceos are 20 years or older, Fleet Discovery shows. In summer 2024, the carrier announced it would defer delivery of 44 A321neos to 2030 and beyond as a cost-savings measure, while planning to extend the lives of approximately 30 of its A320ceos to maintain flat year-over-year capacity.

In maintaining those aircraft, JetBlue has “really doubled down” on using shoulder seasons to restore fleet health through a customized “technical reliability improvement program,” getting the fleet ready to go for its next peak period, the VP explains.

“We’ve got some quite old A320s that are out there, we’ve had to do the ESG II [life extension] mods to them,” he said, noting investments to upgrade aging interiors. “What [customers] don’t see behind the scenes is the effect of aging on the basic reliability and the systems of the aircraft,” Marcontell said, where advanced tools are being used to target specific tails to do specific work—both in-house and with third-party business partners for heavier needs.

“We really use that time to try to restore fleet health and get the aircraft ready to go for another peak season, notwithstanding the age of the airplane,” he said. “You’ve got to be very customized at this, and you’ve got to be really aggressive about it as these airplanes get older.”