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Hi I'm David Neeleman,Founder and Chairman of JetBlue Airways. Each week I fly on JetBlue flights and talk to customers so I can find out how we can improve our airline. This is my flight log... To Chat or Not to Chat… That is the QuestionAsk anyone who flies a lot what they think about using cell phones in the air, and they will tell you exactly how they feel. There are very few people who aren’t passionate about this subject. We periodically poll our customers on how they feel, and they overwhelmingly tell us they DO NOT want people talking on cell phones in the air. The airplane is one of the last bastions for busy people to actually relax, go off the grid for a while, and not have to replicate the office environment. You see it all the time – the guy next to you at a restaurant is on the BlackBerry or cell phone chatting away, interrupting your experience. Or maybe it’s you – unable to unplug from the office for any reasonable amount of time. I admit, I’m one of those people. “CrackBerry” is not a joke to me. The only time I really unplug from the office is on Sunday – that day is absolutely reserved and dedicated to my family. Even when I’m on one of our flights, I’m working, talking to our customers and handing out our snacks. (I don’t do the beverage service, though – I’m too afraid of spilling a soda on you! I leave that to the real pros – our great flight attendants.) Last year, our subsidiary LiveTV won the bid for a 1 megahertz of spectrum, and since then, we’ve been busy scoping our strategy. More recently, we’ve been gearing up our plan to implement "silent" options for our customers on board – things like texting via your cell phone or CrackBerry… er, I mean, BlackBerry. The challenge is to offer something most customers want and will use, and to do it without adding unbearable implementation and maintenance costs to our bottom line. (We want to replicate the experience of being the first airline to offer free TV to every customer.) We prefer to make any option free to our customers – we learned a lot from the Connexion by Boeing experience. The Connexion product offered broadband access for a fee, and the number of people who used it was very limited. Turns out that not enough people were willing to pay for the service. An expensive product needs a lot of customers, and it just didn’t work out. We think our customers will want some virtual link to the ground, and it’s a great way to show that JetBlue isn’t “just another airline.” We’re not ready to announce anything yet, but you can count on JetBlue to yet again be the first airline to offer you more value for the money, and to make your JetBlue Experience even better. -David Reporting from Washington…I’m in Washington, D.C. today, testifying before the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Aviation, about our Customer Bill of Rights, and why I think the customer does not need intervention from the government on service issues. Look, it’s real binary for me, personally – if you don’t fly JetBlue, we don’t exist. So it’s in our best interest to serve you well, and if things don’t go as planned, it’s up to us to make it right. I think the government does an excellent job overseeing the industry over safety matters, and because of this leadership, all airlines share information on their safety programs so that every other airline benefits from their experience. We recently hosted a conference of more than dozen airlines, cargo carriers and aviation authorities in Orlando, FL, and more than 175 industry professionals shared their experiences with one another. But service issues… that’s another matter. We compete on service issues. Customers choose their airline on how well they were treated the last time they flew. I can think of no greater incentive for JetBlue to improve its operations and make things right for its customers. Here’s a link to my full testimony before Congress. IN OTHER NEWS: I’m watching with great interest the AOL Blogging Stocks “battle of the brands” article on JetBlue v. Southwest. I used to work for Southwest… well, it was only for five months or so, but I have a lot of respect for that organization. So anytime JetBlue is pitched against Southwest, I’m always interested in hearing what people have to say. This “battle” has produced a crazy amount of votes, and I’m none too happy that most of the voters (for now, at least) are favoring Southwest, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Feel free to cast your vote and leave a comment. You can always tell us directly about your JetBlue Experience – drop us a note at Speak Up. You’ll see a new design to the Speak Up pages – we made some fields required to better serve you. This new design allows us to sort and prioritize customer feedback for response, which means you’ll get a response from us within a reasonable amount of time. -David Rain, rain… go away…Yet ANOTHER Nor’easter is hitting the Northeast today, causing major flooding in the coastal areas. It’s interrupting flight travel too – we’ve cancelled a number of flights in order to relieve long delays. The weather is starting to clear up in New York, but the system is moving north, so our Upstate New York and New England destinations will continue to experience delays or cancellations through this evening. As always, please check the status of your flight online before leaving for the airport – no matter what airline you’re flying. It takes a lot more than a “little rain” to stop the Boston Marathon, though. This is our second year as the official airline of the Boston Marathon, and we couldn’t be more proud to partner with the oldest and arguably most well-known Marathon in North America. To celebrate this year, we held a contest for our crewmembers and asked them to share their best running stories. Two of the winners are pictured here:
-David Calling All Shutterbugs…
The picture to the left was taken June 30, 2006, when we started service to Pittsburgh, At last count, we have 89 members of our Flickr group – and we’d love to have you join us! -David A Great Visit with Salt Lake City Crewmembers…Last week I went to Salt Lake City and had a wonderful time with about 200 of our home-based Reservations crewmembers. These crewmembers were honored for working massive amounts of overtime to help ensure our customers were notified and assisted when their travel plans were interrupted during the three storms that impacted our operations between Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day. Some of you may know that the vast majority of JetBlue’s Reservations crew works from home. The person on the other end of 800-JETBLUE is probably talking to you from his or her home office, often with their kids playing quietly or doing their homework nearby. With the recent weather interruptions, many of our customers called JetBlue to check the status of their flight, and the call volume was sometimes overwhelming. We dedicate about half of our available phone lines to outbound calls during these weather events – so we can call you at home before you leave for the airport to let you know what’s going on with your travel plans. The other half of our phone lines remain available for inbound calls. We’re going to roll out really great functionality soon for jetblue.com to help serve our customers better during weather interruptions, and that will also help reduce call volume to our 800-JETBLUE lines. In the meantime, I wanted to personally thank our Res crewmembers who handled record-setting numbers of calls over the last six weeks, and for serving you with the level of care and respect you’ve come to expect. I wish you and your family a happy holiday weekend. -David |
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Kristen Raftery (left) from Inflight (pictured with her adorable son!) and Tom Steffek (right) from West Pam Beach, FL Ground Ops won the contest and will be giving it their all on today's 26.2 mile course from Hopkinton to Boston. Best of luck to Kristen and Tom -- we know you'll make JetBlue proud! – and best of luck to all of today’s road runners in Boston. I guess we’ll find out if it is actually possible to run between the raindrops!
