Hey JetBlue – I'm building a prototype that could save you $5M+ / week on ops disruptions. Here's what happened on my flight to LA and the prototype I’ve created mid-air¹ to help address the root causes:

¹ please go easy on the concept – we have spotty internet right now and I’ve got 17% battery to finish!

💸 THE PROBLEM

Our aircraft got swapped 8+ hours before departure (transatlantic aircraft configuration on cross-country domestic route – 10 fewer seats than originally scheduled). This created a $50k+ incident and a 2-hour total delay for passengers. Many ticketed passengers didn’t make it onto their original flight:

🔍 WHAT IF WE … ?

Build a system that can automatically re-assign seats and re-route passengers according to their preferences when you face delays or aircraft configuration changes?

This is probably a common enough use case that happens 100x per week across your entire fleet? Just a guess.

✈️ THE BIGGER ISSUES

According to 2024 DOT data, Jetblue faced 600–800 flights delays / week driven by Jetblue’s operational delays (representing ~40% of all 2k+ delays / week across 7k+ flights / week).

Jetblue is ranked 9th out of 10 domestically in on-time performance (71.3% from Jan to Sep 2024) and subject to Department of Transportation (DOT) scrutiny right now. Jetblue was fined $2M by the DOT for being “chronically delayed”, mostly due to aggressive scheduling. $1M of those fines are being given back to passengers. Some of the delays were weather and ATAC driven, and Jetblue insisted that the new administration help here.

Worst case scenario: On Aug 14, 2025, JetBlue had 179 delays and 15 cancellations across major cities in the United States. That's 194 disrupted flights in a single day – which compounds for days to come.

Think about all the crew overtime, passenger compensation, missed connections, aircraft utilization losses, etc.

With the current manual interventions for just the aircraft reconfiguration problem, I estimate many of your 100x delays could be costing you $5M / week. Worst case scenario like Aug 14, 2025 – probably $10M in losses for just that day,

✈️ A POTENTIAL SOLUTION ²

² please go easy on this – I now have 8% battery after writing the problems and opportunities. Feel free to use this as a starting point.

Automatically assign passengers based on their preferences and what they originally purchased when the aircraft is delayed or swapped to a new configuration.

Instant notifications with new seats, upgrades (based on status), or refunds (for any previously paid extras that weren’t delivered). This would cover 80% of customer and staff issues.

Let passengers choose alternatives, including re-booking on Jetblue or partner airlines riding empty (the latter isn’t possible today) + flying to nearby airports (this information isn’t readily available to agents, taking 10+ minutes to rebook 1 passenger),

Let passengers offer their flexibility in the Jetblue app and get compensated for boarding connecting flights or taking later flights. This can be done in natural language + personalized in-app options. For passengers that can’t use the technology at the time, have Gate agents help manually.

Help Gate Agents triage and focus on 5% critical and 15% non-critical cases that can’t be automated. For example, an elderly customer requested wheelchair assistance. She was forced to walk to the gate and was manually reassigned to a seat in the back of the plane. Thankfully, this woman got taken care of with a free upgrade to Mint.

📊 THE BUSINESS CASE

Cost per incident: ~$50k (crew overtime, delays, compensation) Frequency: 100s delayed flights per week across your fleet Solution ROI: Payback within 1 incident (an engineering + ops team could build this in a week) Weekly savings potential: $5M across 100x average disruptions

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I'm a product designer who has shipped connected systems across health, fintech, and energy products. I’ve solved similar operational challenges, enabling ops teams to solve customer challenges at scale.

What's the best way to get this in front of your team?

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And here are a couple of updates to the prototype, JetBlue team.

Hopefully this should give you a good starting point for a discussion with your product and ops teams.

Feel free to ask me any questions.

P.S. Lindsey, Esther, James, and your whole cabin crew have been really helpful. They're keeping everyone entertained through the chaos – definitely deserve a raise :)

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Short URL: https://dub.sh/jetblue

Current URL: https://article.app/kunalslab/jetblue-automated-operations-concept

Original link with videos: https://x.com/KunalsLab/status/1969853310737035462

Original link on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7375635724228005889/

Prototype 1: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/e0ffa137-d3e9-4580-9230-f5e99f3f692a

Prototype 2: https://beta-modern-42197964.figma.site