Rachel Wimberly

JetBlue Redeems Itself
July 13, 2007

In the March 5 issue of Tradeshow Week I wrote an op-ed entitled “JetBlue’s Mea Culpa Falls Short,” commenting on the public relations disaster the airline faced after winter storms on Valentine’s Day kept passengers trapped in planes on runways for more than eight hours.

At the time, Congress urgently called for a Passenger’s Bill of Rights, but JetBlue beat it to the punch and enacted its own in order to save some face. I’m sure a lot of people, especially those stuck on the planes, vowed to never fly JetBlue again and the company was lambasted for its mistakes. Personally, I thought it was a goner.

But, more than four months later, JetBlue not only seems to have recovered from the mess, but come out the other end with flying colors.

In late April, when storms were heading towards the Northeast, the airline stuck to its word and told its passengers, “No problem – change your flights and take other ones to avoid the weather – it’s on us.”

Also, instead of laying low and trying to just manage with the routes it had, JetBlue kept adding more, especially out of New York and Boston. It also worked hard on customer relations and in June was ranked the highest in a customer satisfaction of North American airlines study by J.D. Power & Associates.

JetBlue kept the ball rolling in July and, in a move to attract the youth crowd and present a more hip image, it partnered with Twentieth Century Fox on the upcoming film, “The Simpsons Movie,” in which it was named the official airline of Springfield, the fictional town where the cartoon characters live. The gimmick hit national newscasts, and JetBlue was left looking good.

After the debacle earlier this year, JetBlue’s future seemed questionable. But if its June passenger traffic report is any indication, with a 12.7-percent increase over June 2006, the airline seems to be doing just fine.

Posted by Rachel Wimberly on July 13, 2007 | Comments (0)