New York-based jetBlue is to resume flight attendant hiring on Monday, April 19 at 12 pm EST according to employees who have been asked to make candidate recommendations. The decision to reopen flight attendant recruitment is yet another sign of a sudden bounce back for one of the industry’s hardest hit by the pandemic.
Few details are yet known about jetBlue’s latest flight attendant recruitment campaign and the airline has declined to respond to multiple attempts for comment. Insiders, however, are confident that the airline will start accepting applications from external candidates from Monday for a limited period.
It remains a mystery as to how many flight attendants – or ‘Inflight Crewmembers’ as jetBlue prefers to call them – the airline plans to hire but the recruitment campaign comes just months after jetBlue announced a major expansion for the first half of 2021.
Along with two entirely new destinations (including a Miami debut), jetBlue intends to launch 24 new routes in the first six months of the year. The airline has also started to take delivery of brand new Airbus A220 aircraft to replace its oldest planes, along with a A321neo with brand new Business Class Mint seats.
Later this year, jetBlue will also take on the transatlantic market with the launch of direct flights to London. jetBlue is yet to reveal full details about the launch, although the airline has secured slots at Gatwick, Stanstead and Heathrow to Boston and New York.
Unlike American and United Airlines, the Long Island headquartered jetBlue never had to resort to furloughing its employees as passenger numbers plummeted at the height of the Corona crisis.
Instead, the carrier encouraged employees to take extended periods of unpaid leave and introduced sweeping cost-cutting initiatives including halting pay rises to avoid the spectre of involuntary furloughs.
Southwest Airlines is already in the process of recalling all of its flight attendants for a June 1 restart as demand soars and American Airlines is also calling back crew members who had taken extended periods of leave from the carrier.
Frontier Airlines has resumed limited flight attendant recruitment, while upstart Breeze Airways is also looking for new flight attendants for its launch later this year.
