JetBlue Airways outlined a company “customer bill of rights” Tuesday in an effort to recover from a horrifying operational breakdown last week.
An icy storm in the Northeast trapped passengers on planes for hours and led the airline to cancel more than 1,000 flights, including several Denver flights.
New York-based JetBlue operates six daily flights into and out of Denver and canceled three Feb. 14, three Thursday and two Friday. Denver flights have operated normally since Saturday, the airline said.
In a letter to customers, JetBlue chief executive David Neeleman said, “We are sorry and embarrassed” about the airline’s worst operational week in its seven-year history.
“For seven years, JetBlue has been kind of known as this darling of the industry and the leader of the space,” JetBlue spokesman Eric Brinker said. “We somehow last week completely lost sight of that.”
Calyon Securities analyst Ray Neidl said in a report Tuesday, “We believe that the company may have been too aggressive in cutting unit costs, which may have left its resources stretched too thin for emergency situations.”
“What JetBlue did was utterly stupid,” said Robert Polk, co- owner of Polk Majestic Travel Group in Denver. “I think JetBlue has certainly learned its lesson and won’t do it again.”
The JetBlue customer bill of rights guarantees vouchers to customers whose departing flights are delayed by an hour or more if it’s JetBlue’s fault, and will give $1,000 to customers involuntarily denied boarding.
If the airline cancels a flight within 12 hours of its scheduled departure and it is JetBlue’s fault, it will refund or reaccommodate passengers and give a voucher. Customers with ground delays of 30 minutes or more on arrival or three hours or more on departure would also receive vouchers.
JetBlue also said it will allow customers to deplane if a ground delay lasts more than five hours.
Passenger bill of rights measures being introduced in Congress by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., have some more stringent measures, including requiring airlines to give passengers the right to deplane after a ground delay of three hours, with certain exceptions. They also would require airlines to provide passengers with services including food, drinking water and sanitary bathrooms.
Airlines have resisted past efforts at a federal passenger bill of rights by adopting their own plans and devoting more resources to improving service.
“Our preference is the government doesn’t have to tell us how we should treat our passengers,” said Frontier Airlines spokesman Joe Hodas. “Passengers should vote with their checkbooks and say, ‘If I’m mistreated by your airline, I’m not flying you again.”‘
Frontier, along with other airlines, ran into its own problems in December when DIA shut down for 45 hours.
Neeleman admitted Tuesday that the company discovered some areas that need to be beefed up. JetBlue plans to train headquarters employees to work at the airport in emergencies and better communicate with part-time employees who take phone calls to quickly ramp up.
Neeleman estimated the events of last week will cost the airline $30 million or more. JetBlue shares fell nearly 4.9 percent to close at $12.90 Tuesday.
When asked about his son’s straightforward response to the crisis, Gary Neeleman said David was raised to be “very honest in his business dealings.”
“He doesn’t make any excuses for anybody else to do his job,” Gary Neeleman said by phone from Bermuda. “If there’s a problem he goes right after the problem… That’s just the way he’s been since he was a little boy.”
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-954-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com.
Pay for delay
JetBlue’s “customer bill of rights” that gives fliers travel credits:
Ground delays: Vouchers for $25 up to the full value of their round-trip depending on the length of time passengers spend on the plane
Departure delays: Vouchers of $25 up to the round-trip cost because of “controllable irregularities”
Cancellations: Voucher for future travel equal to their original round trip for flights canceled within 12 hours of departure because of problems within the airline’s control
