I read on the news the debacle with JetBlue and didn’t want to believe it. JetBlue is my favorite airline: cheap, no nonsense, nice new planes, chips, cookies, junk food galore (as much as you want), and your own TV. Love it! As much as I wanted to sleep on my red-eye to NYC, I couldn’t help watching reruns of Will & Grace.
I got the following email the other day from JetBlue and really want to applaud them for stepping up, admitting wrongdoing, and taking accountability. Good business is all about serving your customers. What is best for the customer? But we all make mistakes. We can all learn from them.
My friend is apt to say, “If you don’t have time to do it right, do you have time to do it again?” JetBlue has plenty of opportunities to do it again and I think they’ll be doing it right this time around.
Here is the email.
Dear JetBlue Customers,
We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.
Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue’s seven year history. Following the severe winter ice storm in the Northeast, we subjected our customers to unacceptable delays, flight cancellations, lost baggage, and other major inconveniences. The storm disrupted the movement of aircraft, and, more importantly, disrupted the movement of JetBlue’s pilot and inflight crewmembers who were depending on those planes to get them to the airports where they were scheduled to serve you. With the busy President’s Day weekend upon us, rebooking opportunities were scarce and hold times at 1-800-JETBLUE were unacceptably long or not even available, further hindering our recovery efforts.
Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.
We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are taking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in us. We have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and more timely information to you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures for handling operational difficulties in the future. We are confident, as a result of these actions, that JetBlue will emerge as a more reliable and even more customer responsive airline than ever before.
Most importantly, we have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Rights—our official commitment to you of how we will handle operational interruptions going forward—including details of compensation. I have a video message to share with you about this industry leading action.
You deserved better—a lot better—from us last week. Nothing is more important than regaining your trust and all of us here hope you will give us the opportunity to welcome you onboard again soon and provide you the positive JetBlue Experience you have come to expect from us.
Sincerely,
David Neeleman
Founder and CEO
JetBlue Airways
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