Joanna Geraghty

Meet the First Woman to Lead a Major U.S. Airline

When Joanna Geraghty took the helm of JetBlue in February of last year, the carrier was in a precarious position. It had weathered nearly $3 billion in losses since 2020 and a proposed merger with Spirit had been shot down by a federal judge. Geraghty quickly took action with a turnaround plan. The airline installed first-class seats, opened its first airport lounges in New York and Boston, and jettisoned dozens of money-losing routes across the country, focusing instead on getting back to its roots of serving vacationing passengers in the Eastern United States. So far, the plan is working: The carrier exceeded its revenue expectations in 2024, improving its on-time performance and customer satisfaction scores. The first woman to lead a major U.S. passenger airline, Geraghty has been at JetBlue for nearly two decades, most recently as President and Chief Operating Officer. Originally trained as a lawyer, Geraghty didn’t set out to work in the airline industry, and she advises aspiring executives to take career risks: “You learn so much from trying something that might seem boring at first.”

By Audrey Goodson Kingo