Will you fly Jetblue now?

[bicker]

Look, I'm a huge fan of Jet Blue and will gladly fly them again. But Jet Blue's problems resulted from structural flaws in Jet Blue. They grew too fast - they expanded their routes without having the structural infrastructure to support it. They admit it - why defend them?

As I said, it is indicative of the industry. The fact is that you can say that Delta cut costs too quickly; that US Airways made structural changes to address their bankruptcy that left it without the structural infrastructure that it had in the past; that AirTran is growing too fast, etc. This is an industry issue.

The only difference is that JetBlue is saying that there is a problem, while the other airlines are keeping their problems close to the vest.

As for the interline thing - I've been a reasonably heavy flier for 20 years. I've yet to see a problem where it came into play. I know it does, but it's totally minor.

Not even a little. When I was traveling 200+ days per year, I would be reaccommodated via an interline agreement at least twice each year.

Besides, it's just one more factor in the airline's delay statistics. If an airline averages 10 missed flights due to problems, and is able to fix one of those through interline agreements, that's still 9 missed flights.

Interline agreements don't fix missed flights. It is strictly a benefit to passengers who's itineraries are disrupted by cancellations.

 

[snowbunny]

This is going to be a classic Business School case for years to come...

Right, and for the past two years, the classic business school case has been How JetBlue Ate the Legacy Carriers' Lunch.

Here's a link that might be interesting, it's on JetBlue's website as of today.

http://www.jetblue.com/p/about/ourcompany/promise/Bill_Of_Rights.pdf
and
http://www.jetblue.com/about/ourcompany/apology/index.html

There's another classic business school paradigm: the business that makes a mistake and fixes it has far more customer loyalty than the business that never made a mistake.

 

[bicker]

Isn't that an amazing paradox?

 

[snowbunny]

Isn't that an amazing paradox?

Yes it is, and it demonstrates that aggravation in the moment really doesn't come into play long term.

I've already seen posts here on the Dis with people eagerly awaiting potential JetBlue fare sales as a result of this situation

Next will be complaints that the flight was on time, when someone was really counting on the payment for being late to the gate in order to buy souvies at WDW.

 

[shafke]

I am flying JB and will fly them again.

While Jet Blue did make mistakes there were also a number of things that made this problem worse.

The storm was predicted to change over to rain at some point and this never happened... it was mainly freezing rain. If it had been all snow then this is probably just a minor problem.

This storm occurred just prior to a Holiday week. If this storm happens 1 week earlier then there would probably have been some spare capacity to handle the cancelled flights. As it was the flights for Thurs, Fri, Sat were probably already booked full so therefore could fit the passengers from the cancelled flights.

I believe JFK is the hub for Jet Blue and this shows a big weakness in the hub system that most/all airlines use. Any sort of outage/disaster can bring a whole airline to a stand still.

I think there was also an issue with FAA regulations regarding maximum number of hours a crew can fly. JB may have had planes available but did not have a crew available.

While I think that things could have/should have been handled differently on the day of the storm, once things went bad other circumstances hindered the airline from getting rolling again

 

[Gary M]

I wish JB flew out of IND, I would use them. Last fall I sat on the tarmac in Japan for 6 hours. This was after a 14 hour flight from the USA on NWA and then spent 18 hours in the terminal with two blankets to sleep on the floor with. Customs in Japan would not let us leave the terminal and our baggage was on the plane. It's a long and not pleasant story. I have flown NWA at least 4 times since. If you fly much at all and decide to not use airlines you have trouble with, you will be going by ground transportation, because you will run out of airlines to use.