JetBlue makes it official. The “customer bill of rights” they pre-announced a few days ago is now policy, and (importantly) will be incorporated into the contract of carriage. I’ve only been able to give this a quick once-over (busy day, full of meetings) so my reactions are preliminary, but my first instinct is: “So what?”
I mean, great, they’re admitting they screwed up, and it’s good that a “bill of rights” is incorporated into the contract of carriage, giving it legal heft, but in times of long delays, they’re just giving you vouchers for future flights, not cash back.
Vouchers are not a “payment” — the term reporters used to describe Neeleman’s promises on Sunday — in my book.
(A potential exception: involuntary denied boardings resulting from overbookings “shall receive $1000.” Sounds like cash. Accept no substitutes. Insist on 10 Benjamins.)
The policy still leaves plenty of room for the airline to escape its liability for those vouchers. The magic phrase: “Controllable irregularity.” That sounds like anything remotely weather-related could be called “uncontrollable,” even if human error turned a small delay into a big one.
JetBlue’s 3-minute official announcement of some of their policy changes — but not the specifics of their delay/voucher scheme — is below, for your viewing pleasure. The official policy for delays is here (pdf).
I’ve got a bunch of mail from readers on this and similar issues, which I’ll try to get to later tonight. Stay tuned.
For now, though, what do you think? Is jetBlue’s new policy enough?
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February 20th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I’m also underwhelmed. I posted a few initial thoughts on my blog (click the link above).
February 20th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
The Jetblue policy is weak. Better than nothing, but really, vouchers? Who cares. Glad they’re promising to TRY to get people off the planes faster, but like you said, they have so many loopholes, it’s like swiss cheese. We still need a law.
February 20th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Not enough emphasis on communication with the passengers. Vouchers are a diversionary tactic and dont have much value to a peeved passenger anyway. 5 hours before you promise to try to get me off the aircraft…not good enough. Its a start but there’s room to improve.
February 21st, 2007 at 1:21 pm
[...] Yesterday, I suggested that the loopholes in the policy were large enough to taxi an Airbus A320 through. (”Controllable Irregularity.”) And vouchers are just glorified coupons, and a rather insincere form of “payment.” If you ever look at a supermarket coupon’s fine print, they usually list a cash value that’s well below the face value (e.g., 1/100th of a cent). Same principle here. [...]
March 7th, 2007 at 10:02 am
[...] There’s still the matter of the “controllable irregularity.” As you may recall from my previous critique of the jetBlue apologies, the airline built in a huge loophole with the term “controllable irregularity.” If problems could be blamed — even in part — on anything uncontrollable, such as the weather, they wouldn’t owe you ANYTHING. That has now been codified: Controllable Irregularity as used in Section 36, means a delay, cancellation or diversion that is not caused by a Force Majeure Event. For the sake of clarity, if in a chain of multiple events, the original irregularity is due to a Force Majeure Event, the cause of the subsequent event(s) reasonably related to the original irregularity shall be deemed an Uncontrollable Irregularity. [...]