It must suck to be working for Jet Blue. I am sure the numbers of people who have called it Jet Blows to the faces of employees of the beleaguered airline are countless.
You have of course heard about the latest problems with Jet Blue Airways. They left a plane load of people trying to get to Aruba stranded in the plane on the runway at JFK airport for 11 hours. After a few hours the snack peanuts ran out and by the end of the ordeal the toilets were overflowing and the plane resembled something out of Dante’s inferno. And that was only one of dozens of similar meltdowns across the country.
The airlines president and CEO, a man named David Neeleman has gone on record trying to do the right thing. He apologized and has offered a bill of rights for passengers. I don’t think it’s going to work and I’ll tell you why. The bill of rights, which takes up several pages seems at first to be a pretty good deal. If you are delayed you get some rewards depending on how long you are inconvenienced. A couple hour delay you get a $25 voucher good for future Jet Blue travel, get stuck for 6 hours and you get a round trip refund and so on.
The problem is in the language. The bill of rights talks about the delays being due to a Controllable Irregularity. Smells like a loophole to me. And another point. If the airline has a bunch of these problems again I predict if they pay off everybody, they will go belly up.
The last point I would like to make. This long “Bill of rights†for passengers assumes by its very existence that there will in fact be more problems like they just went thru. Instead of solving the problems they are making sure they cover their asses in the event it all blows up again. That’s just the sort of self defeating attitude that got them where they are in the first place, isn’t it?
