If you look at Jetblue's SEC filings nothing is really changing. Aircraft rents in total are going up because of the rapidly increasing number of aircraft but I see no evidence that jetblue received a special deal, that is coming back to bite them.
What they did get was by being the first start up in history to start up with brand new aircraft was a VERY predictable (IE zero) maintanence expense in the first couple of years coupled with relatively good fleet reliability and utilization. All aircraft being paid for are FLYING. As the fleet ages and passes 3 years average age things like C and D checks start popping up taking those aircraft that you are paying for out of service for up to a month at time and you are seeing that effect now. So that end of the expenses are creeping up, but it shouldn't be enough to really hurt them.
My take on those rumors are that they are simply urban myth more than anything else. Also as near as I can figure it looks like Jetblue has paid cash for some of the later delivery of aircraft as well.
The decline of Jetblue's stock price is just the end of the in initial speculative boom as far as I can figure, coupled with an overblown optimism on the ability of the majors to fight back.
The majors have their handfull this time. Unlike other startups that have given them trouble in the past (think western pacific) this one is very profitable, where as most other ones NEVER made a dollar (vangard, westpac, peoples etc) or if they did make money it was for a short period of time before the lost the plot (america west, but they are coming back now).
Jetblue has been profitable all along and has quite a large war chest built up plus they own a lot of their aircraft now so they got tons of leverage they haven't even thought about using. So lets say the majors all gang up and jetblue and really try and squeeze it. Well how do you squeeze and airline that is actually making money at these rediculously low ticket prices?
Furthermore, I hate to admit it, but they have a good product that sells itself and a fanatically loyal customer base. I couldn't give away first class tickets to Florida to my neighbor on AA. He chose to pay a few hundred dollars on fly jetblue instead. How do you compete with that?
Worse, anyone who operated out of JFK during any of the snow storms this winter or the blackout, saw that jetblue kept running with their operations intact. Their computers kept working on laptops I guess. AA's sabre based system did not. Their deicing trucks are brand new state of the art. etc....
They spend money where it is important, on aircraft, technology and equiptment for the airlines, not stock buybacks to inflate share price for the CEO's options, naming arena's after them, building white elephant terminals etc... And they don't use "yield management" to gouge their best customers (which may well be a congressman trying to get home to see his kids during a 2 day break in session in washington, so when things like slots come up in congress, guess who gets them?)
unfortunatly for me and AA, Jetblue is the real deal. atleast till Nealman leaves. The crunch time for this airline will be when David neelman leaves. That is usually the crunch for most successfull airlines. When the guy with the vision and charisma departs invariably a beancounter comes in and destroys the vision. (think ANY airline, you are even seeing early stages of that at Southwest now that Herb is gone)
Cheers,
Wino