Executive Summary
JetBlue (JBLU) reported second-quarter 2026 results this morning: an accelerating top line, a real beat on unit revenue, and a re-established full-year guide, alongside a GAAP net loss that widened year-over-year and a balance sheet that continued to decline. That mixed picture arrives in the middle of a live industry-consolidation news cycle, after United’s exploratory merger talks with Delta became public last week.
Line up the six largest US carriers on a trailing-twelve-month basis through this latest round of prints, and United (UAL) and Delta (DAL) now account for a staggering 89% of the group’s operating income. At the same time, JetBlue and Alaska both posted trailing losses this quarter. Against that backdrop, I created a pro forma leverage model for a hypothetical United acquisition of JetBlue using their Q2 balance sheet — all built on Daloopa’s standardized financial data, with every figure traceable back to the original filing.
Quick Earnings Snapshot: JetBlue, Q2 2026
JetBlue reported this morning, July 28, 2026, and with Daloopa’s earnings flash skill, I got a quick read on the numbers in minutes, well ahead of the 10 am earnings call. Daloopa Skills are pre-built, end-to-end workflows that run through the MCP and automate what used to be manual work. This specific skill pulls the quarter’s key numbers against prior periods and guidance, flags risk signals, and surfaces cross-industry read-throughs. The headline: real progress on unit revenue and guidance, but still burning cash.
| Metric | 2025 Q3 | 2025 Q4 | 2026 Q1 | 2026 Q2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total operating revenue, $mm | 2,322 | 2,244 | 2,240 | 2,697 |
| Operating income (loss), $mm | (100) | (100) | (224) | (141) |
| Net income (loss), $mm | (143) | (177) | (319) | (247) |
| Diluted EPS, $ | (0.39) | (0.47) | (0.86) | (0.66) |
| Cash & equivalents, $mm | 2,410 | 1,946 | 1,857 | 1,656 |
Source: Daloopa (company filings).
Revenue growth accelerated to +14.5% YoY, up from +4.7% in Q1, and revenue per available seat mile (RASM) rose +10.9% YoY (per filing), near the top of guidance. Management re-established full-year 2026 guidance after going quiet on it at the Q1 print, and the new RASM (revenue per available seat mile) range (+10.0% to +12.5%) is more than double what was guided back at the Q4 2025 print. Underneath that improving top line, the operating loss narrowed sequentially from Q1 but stayed negative; the net loss of $247 million was still worse than the $74 million loss a year ago, and cash fell for a third straight quarter to $1,656 million. Management also introduced a long-dated 2028 EPS target of “at least $1.00 per share,” built on fuel assumptions well below this quarter’s elevated level.
The full first-look flash, with guidance detail, risk flags, and cross-industry read-throughs, was published separately as a same-day earnings flash using Daloopa’s earnings_flash skill.
The Big Three’s Profit Machine
United and Delta Now Account for ~89% of Industry Profit
Updating our six-carrier comparison with the freshest quarter available for each name, United and Delta’s dominance of industry profit has only gotten starker.
| Company | 2025 Q3 | 2025 Q4 | 2026 Q1 | 2026 Q2 | TTM Sum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue | (100) | (100) | (224) | (141) | (565) |
| United | 1,395 | 1,386 | 997 | 1,096 | 4,874 |
| Delta | 1,684 | 1,467 | 501 | 1,864 | 5,516 |
| American | 151 | 451 | (41) | 446 | 1,007 |
| Southwest | 35 | 391 | 330 | 285 | 1,041 |
| Alaska | 148 | 75 | (279) | (168) | (224) |
| Six-carrier total | 3,313 | 3,670 | 1,284 | 3,382 | 11,649 |
Source: Daloopa (company filings). Operating income (GAAP), $ millions. TTM = trailing twelve months, 2025 Q3 through 2026 Q2.
United and Delta combined for $10,390 million of the six-carrier group’s $11,649 million in trailing-twelve-month operating income, or roughly 89.2% (calc.) of the total, essentially validating Scott Kirby’s own claim from his January 2026 Stratechery interview that the two of them would be “100% of the industry profitability this year.” Two of the six carriers, JetBlue and now Alaska, are trailing-twelve-month loss-makers on an operating basis. American and Southwest remain solidly profitable but at a fraction of United and Delta’s scale.
Margins and Leverage: Latest Quarter
| Metric | JetBlue | United | Delta | American | Southwest | Alaska* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TTM operating margin | -5.9% | 7.7% | 8.1% | 1.7% | 3.5% | -1.5% |
| Current ratio | 0.70x | 0.78x | 0.42x | 0.53x | 0.49x | 0.43x |
| Debt / Equity | 5.34x | 2.08x | 0.59x | n.m. (deficit) | 0.84x | 1.36x |
Source: Daloopa (company filings). Figures use each company’s latest reported quarter (2026 Q2 where available). *Alaska’s current ratio and debt/equity use 2026 Q1 balance sheet data; its 2026 Q2 balance sheet detail was not yet available in Daloopa at the time of this analysis.
JetBlue’s leverage increased this quarter even as its top line improved: debt/equity rose from 4.66x to 5.34x as stockholders’ equity fell another $223 million while debt ticked up slightly. Alaska joined JetBlue in the trailing-loss column after a $168 million operating loss this quarter. United and Delta remain the only two names generating profit at scale, with Delta investment-grade and UAL just below.
Would a United Acquisition of JetBlue Make Sense?
United’s approach to Delta went nowhere, and the antitrust math explains why: a combined United-Delta would control roughly 34.6% of the domestic market, an outcome the Department of Justice has shown no appetite to permit, particularly after blocking JetBlue’s own attempt to buy Spirit Airlines in 2024. JetBlue is a smaller, more antitrust-digestible target for United by comparison. Whether it makes financial sense is a separate question, and JetBlue’s freshest numbers make the balance-sheet case against it even clearer than before.
The Purchase Price Is Still the Easy Part
| Metric | JetBlue |
|---|---|
| Shares outstanding, mm | 372.0 |
| Share price, 7/27/26 (close)* | $5.43 |
| Implied equity value, $mm (calc.) | ~2,020 |
| Total debt, $mm (2026 Q2) | 8,478 |
| Less: cash, $mm (2026 Q2) | (1,656) |
| Implied enterprise value, $mm (calc.) | ~8,842 |
*Stock price sourced from Daloopa’s OHLCV data (last available close as of this writing). Market value and enterprise value are Daloopa research calculations.
JetBlue’s equity is still worth roughly $2.0 billion, and its debt, now $8,478 million, remains more than four times that. Whatever United pays JetBlue’s shareholders, it inherits an enterprise worth close to $8.8 billion, most of it debt, on top of a business whose trailing EBITDA continues to decline.
The Leverage Math
Creating a quick pro forma model with JetBlue’s Q2 2026 balance sheet and trailing financials. JetBlue’s trailing operating loss widened to $565 million over the past four quarters, and even after adding back $711 million of D&A, its trailing EBITDA is only about $146 million, slightly worsening sequentially because the weak Q2 2026 print replaced a small operating profit from a year earlier in the trailing window. United’s own standalone leverage, using its freshest Q2 2026 numbers, sits at roughly 3.1x net debt to EBITDA and 2.08x debt to equity.
| Metric | United (standalone) | Pro forma: stock deal, debt assumed only | Pro forma: cash/debt-funded deal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Combined debt, $mm (calc.) | 34,742 | 43,220 | 45,240 |
| Combined cash, $mm (calc.) | 10,166 | 11,822 | 11,822 |
| Combined net debt, $mm (calc.) | 24,576 | 31,398 | 33,418 |
| Combined TTM EBITDA, $mm (calc.) | 7,870 | 8,016 | 8,016 |
| Net debt / EBITDA | 3.12x | 3.92x | 4.17x |
| Debt / Equity | 2.08x | 2.36x | 2.71x |
Source: Daloopa (company filings) for standalone inputs (both companies’ 2026 Q2 results); pro forma figures are Daloopa research calculations, illustrative only. Assumptions unchanged from our prior analysis: no synergies, no purchase-accounting goodwill, no acquisition premium beyond the two financing scenarios modeled.
Even in the friendlier stock-funded scenario, United’s net debt to EBITDA now worsens by roughly 0.8 turns, from 3.1x to 3.9x, versus the 0.7-turn decline last quarter because JetBlue’s trailing EBITDA has thinned further even as its headline numbers improved. In the cash/debt-funded scenario, leverage now crosses 4.1x net debt to EBITDA, a level that could draw real scrutiny from rating agencies. The irony is that JetBlue’s improving RASM trajectory and reinstated guidance, taken at face value, argue for patience rather than urgency. If the JetForward turnaround is actually working, United has no balance-sheet reason to pay up for it today, and every reason to wait for JetBlue to either fix its own leverage or not.
How This Compares to Kirby’s Prior Deal-Making
It’s worth being precise about what Scott Kirby has and hasn’t acquired. His reputation as an industry consolidator was built before he ever worked at United: as an executive at America West, he engineered the 2005 merger with US Airways, drove a failed hostile bid for Delta in 2006, and later became President of the merged American Airlines Group after US Airways acquired American out of bankruptcy in 2013. Kirby joined United in 2016 as President and became CEO in 2020.
United’s own M&A activity during Kirby’s tenure has been narrow by comparison: a 40% equity stake in regional partner CommuteAir, a convertible-note investment in Mesa Air Group tied to a flying agreement, and minority stakes in future-mobility ventures like Archer Aviation, Eve Air Mobility, and Boom Supersonic. None of these involved United taking on another airline’s balance sheet at anything close to the scale a JetBlue deal would require. The closest real precedent for a full-airline combination changing United’s own balance sheet is the 2010 merger with Continental, a stock-for-stock “merger of equals” completed six years before Kirby arrived at United. It was structured in a way (no debt-funded premium, no cash consideration) that most resembles the friendlier stock-deal scenario modeled above rather than the more realistic cash/debt-funded one.
Kirby’s own public comments on JetBlue specifically have moved from noncommittal to clear skepticism. Asked directly in the January 2026 Stratechery interview whether a JetBlue deal or simply buying more aircraft was the harder path to getting bigger, he called them both “interesting possibilities” and said “they both have challenges,” declining to rule anything out. By late May, after his American Airlines outreach became public, his tone hardened: he called the idea of using the American deal to soften ground for a JetBlue approval “idiotic” and said of JetBlue directly, “the last thing I’m gonna do is buy a route network that loses money.” By June, in comments to CNN, he had settled on wanting United and JetBlue to do “as much as we can together” through their existing Blue Sky partnership, short of a full combination. JetBlue’s Q2 print, an improving top line riding on top of a still-declining balance sheet, is consistent with everything in that arc: there is more here for United to admire than to buy.
Bottom Line
United and Delta’s dominance of industry profit is now even more pronounced: roughly 89% of this six-carrier group’s trailing operating income, with Delta again the single most profitable name in absolute dollars. JetBlue’s second quarter offered real, verifiable progress on unit revenue and guidance, the kind of print that will get cited in the JetForward turnaround narrative for a while. Its balance sheet moved in the opposite direction over the same three months, and layering that balance sheet onto United’s would push net debt to EBITDA above 4.0x in a realistic financing scenario, a full turn worse than United carries on its own today. A deeper commercial partnership, not a balance-sheet-altering acquisition, remains both the more likely outcome and the one the numbers, updated for this morning’s print, argue for most strongly.
