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JetBlue’s passengers haven’t gotten much of a break since the debacle at JFK last week.

Every day this weekend, a quarter of flights were cancelled. Monday’s flights are similarly hard-hit: 139 out of 600 flights are cut.

There were some bright spots: One crew went above and beyond the call of duty by taking the initiative and hiring a taxi from JFK to Newburgh-Stewart to fly an unused (!?) plane to Sarasota. Good for them, and for the passengers who were stuck on the ground in Sarasota. That’s good customer service. But… why were the airline’s assets stuck on the ground in the first place? Why weren’t pilots dispatched to Newburgh in the first place? Anyway…

Other than the taxi hirin’ pilots, it’s been nothing but bad news. So it’s time for damage control.

Today, jetBlue is promising to penalize itself if it screws up again:

[CEO David] Neeleman said he would enact what he called a customer bill of rights that would financially penalize JetBlue — and reward passengers — for any repeat of the current upheaval. He said he would propose a plan to pay customers, after some amount of time, by the hour for being stranded on a plane. (my emphasis)

First off, hats off to jetBlue for admitting that they screwed up, and that this wasn’t just the weather’s fault. As I’ve argued ad nauseam, this was a problem of logistics and customer service, not snow. Neeleman even went further, and said “his company’s management lacked depth in operations.” Ouch. Someone’s getting schooled. Or fired. Maybe both.

Paying customers for the airline’s failures is interesting. We’ll see if it’s cash, or the dreaded voucher.

Just like American Airlines tried to pre-empt regulation by promising to change its policies, jetBlue is trying to avoid oversight by instituting a new policy. The airline is smart to put money where its mouth is, and this proposed penalty scheme sounds stronger (and more explicit) than any of the customer service plans that airlines created back in 1999. But it remains to be seen if this promise will be legally incorporated into the contract of carriage or not. If it’s not in the contract, then it’s not binding.

That said, this is smart politics by jetBlue. If they can come out of this looking like a customer-service oriented airline again, then they’ve made lemonade out of lemons.

Related:
- Poll: Will a Passengers’ Bill of Rights become law?
- Instant replay? JetBlue passengers stuck on planes for over 9 hours
- Should we trust airlines to improve passenger rights?

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