Et tu, JetBlue?

THE LAST TIME JETBLUE AIRLINES made headlines, a planeload of its passengers sat glued to their in-seat television screens, watching themselves in real time before their pilot tried to pull off a nervy emergency landing with a malfunctioning front landing gear on an LAX runway.

That weird media moment ended happily enough, but JetBlue’s new business troubles might not enjoy such a soft landing. The airline recently announced that it bled $42 million in the fourth quarter of 2005 -- its first-ever losing quarter -- and expects to remain in the red throughout 2006.

Much like the traditional airlines it has heretofore outshined, JetBlue is struggling to meet higher fuel costs, operate efficiently and stave off aggressive competition.

For most fliers, JetBlue’s appeal boils down to plentiful (if pedestrian) satellite TV channels, comfy leather seats and reasonable fares. But from a business perspective, the airline offers a lot more. Modeled after the wildly successful Southwest Airlines, JetBlue kept prices low by flying only one model of aircraft (the Airbus 320), operating out of less-expensive airports (such as Long Beach and New York’s JFK) and hiring non-union crew members. It was supposed to be Southwest with class.

But the company began deviating from this successful formula in what seemed to be a press clippings-driven quest for fabulousness. It started flying more than one kind of plane. It expanded into a whopping 35 markets (17 of the last 20 of which have been unprofitable). It even began flying out of congested, expensive LaGuardia Airport -- an un-Southwest move if there ever was one.

JetBlue’s performance also has begun to wobble. In January, its flights arrived late an awful 29.4% of the time, giving it the worst on-time performance in the industry, according to the Department of Transportation. Late arrivals are poison for low-cost carriers, which need to keep their planes in the sky to keep expenses down.

JetBlue blames its woes on stratospheric jet fuel prices, which have more than tripled over the last five years. But Wall Street rightly blames over-exuberance. After all, JetBlue is beginning to look uncomfortably similar to People Express, the low-cost airline that grew from a bare-bones operator based in Newark, N.J., to a major carrier in less than five years during the 1980s. People Express got too big too soon, flying 747s to London when it should have paid more attention to its original niche market -- the folks who needed a cheap way to fly to places like Buffalo and Columbus, Ohio. It went belly-up in 1987.

But budget-conscious bicoastals and studio execs, don’t despair! You’ll still be able to catch your beloved red-eye nonstop from Burbank to New York. JetBlue is hitting turbulence, not a tornado. As much as we admire the airline’s pizazz, however, here’s hoping its executives can come down from the clouds and focus on the bits of their business that work. A little more bare-bones Southwest and a little less People Express would suit us just fine.