Delta And JetBlue Are Running Out Of Juice — Cranberry Vanishes, Apple Moves To Carton

Delta Air Lines is running short of fruit juice across its domestic operation. Some flights have none, others have a limited supply that’s being restricted to first class, but some still have normal catering because inventories at some airports haven’t been exhausted yet. JetBlue has also told crewmembers that since July 29 cranberry cocktail has been unavailable and apple juice is being loaded in one-liter Tetra Pak cartons instead of individual cans due to a “supplier production issue.” Delta and JetBlue use Minute Maid, which is owned by Coca-Cola, and it’s almost certainly a packaging problem at the beverage giant. Paddle Your Own Kanoo first reported that Delta’s domestic flights were experiencing “temporary supply chain issues” involving apple, orange and cranberry juice. International flights appear largely unaffected. Passenger reorts are of ‘no juice was available’ announcements but juice being served up front, and no juice for a mimosa from Newark to Salt Lake City. Some reports include tomato juice in lieu of Mr. & Mrs. T Bloody Mary Mix, though that may not be related. Aviation watchdog JonNYC shared the internal JetBlue notice: JetBlue too pic.twitter.com/iZKCNyUlxY — JonNYC (@xJonNYC) August 1, 2026 Cranberry cocktail is temporarily unavailable, with no replacement. Apple juice is being loaded in one-liter Tetra Pak cartons in both business and coach. It is the same apple juice, just in different packaging. Existing cans will continue to appear until local supplies are depleted. It’s not an apple shortage, as speculated in some places, the issue is the airline-sized packages since JetBlue can substitute cartons for apple. It’s striking that they’re better able to manage supply chain disruption than Delta, and indeed that Delta is suffering more from a disruption with a Coke company than JetBlue is given their local Atlanta relationship. Cranberry can be bought at scale online so it suggests an airline sizing supply chain issue. It seems plausible that the issue is packaging since Coca-Cola told the SEC that aluminum cans are only available from a limited number of suppliers, and because packaging manufacturers have been warning of tight North American beverage can capacity. Reportedly beverage-can plants are running at 92% – 93% utilization which is genuinely maximum given maintenance and downtime changing between can sizes and labels, and the actual production requirement as basically 110% of sustainable capacity. Demand is highly seasonal with summer as peak. And can manufacturers are scaling up capacity but it’s highly capital-intensive and takes time. On a one-off basis, supply can be augmented from inside the terminal but that doesn’t work at scale for delivering to planes and packing into galley carts plus handing billing. Airlines may double cater from stations that have greater supply but the issue here doesn’t appear to just be local. There is no reliable restoration date. At Delta, what you pay has always determined your worth as a human. Now it determines your access to do juice, too. At JetBlue, it just means no individual cans and juice poured from a shared liter carton. Oddly, I haven’t seen issues with these juices at American, United and Southwest which also stock Minute Maid. Topics on this page