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The folks at the Flight Wisdom blog sent us a note, pointing out their post on jetBlue’s revision of the contract of carriage (pdf) to incorporate the previously promised “bill of rights.” (The last three pages of the contract contain the “bill of rights” provisions.)

Hats off to jetBlue for making good codifying their promises of vouchers for delays into the legal document that governs all tickets. That’s a good step.

But…

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.

So by my reading of this, the passengers who were stuck on the taxiways at JFK for hours last month would have been eligible to receive… NOTHING. (corrected below) The weather started the problems, after all. Subsequent human decisions to keep the aircraft waiting and waiting would not have been necessary, had the weather been fine, so we can trace the “original irregularity” back to the weather.

So I’m back to being underwhelmed. Expect the media to celebrate this new jetBlue contract as a glorious event in the history of corporate apologia. But in reality, your rights haven’t improved much.

(Update/Correction: Re-reading the contract, I stand corrected. I read the first part without reading the second part carefully enough. I see that the controllable/uncontrollable distinction is overruled by the time spent on the taxiway, so yes, the February stranded passengers would have gotten vouchers for their trouble. The controlled/uncontrolled distinction really comes into play when passengers are delayed but the plane hasn’t left the gate. Once the decision to leave the gate is taken, then the “ground delay” rules kick in. Sorry for the mixup. Mea culpa. As Cranky says below, I’ve now gone from underwhelmed, to just plain “whelmed.”)

First off, I’d like to officially declare that I’m tired of the jetBlue story. But it remains the belle of the ball, if by “ball” we mean “e-mail inbox.” Buckle up.

For starters: Late last week, I solicited reader opinions on whether or not the passengers’ bill of rights would become law. This was before the jetBlue fiasco went from a small number of planes stuck on the ground to a multi-day festival of flight cancellations. There were some interesting long-form responses in there, which I’ll address in another post, but the summary:

69% of you predicted that, yes, a passengers’ bill of rights would become law, while 31% said no.

Thanks for all the votes. Follow-up soon. To the mailbag:

The jetBlue ground delays stemmed in large part from the fact that the planes backed away from the jetway, even though they weren’t going to take off. Reader Stephanie writes:

I’ve noticed more and more often that planes are pushing away from the gate on time, and then sitting on the ground for up to an hour, hour and a half before leaving. They then call the flight “on time”… Is this the latest thing airlines are doing to get past saying their flights are late?

For the most part, yes, leaving the gate means the plane has departed on time. But the government’s statistics measure arrival, so a flight that leaves the gate early but doesn’t go anywhere won’t be considered on-time if it arrives late.

Leaving the gate isn’t done to cheat the customer, per se. (The airlines DO pad the flight time a lot, though, making it easier for them to meet a very relaxed “on-time” standard.) Rather, the hurry-up-and-wait policy 1) lets the ground crew meet their on-time departure targets (quotas?), when their job performance is being considered, and 2) opens up the gate for another plane to arrive.

I usually fly in and out of O’Hare, and arriving to find an “occupied gate” is unfortunately very common. I’m generally more annoyed by waiting to deplane than waiting to take off, but I’m sure others feel differently.

Reader Paul writes:

Now that JetBlue has a BOR, do you think that’s enough to stop Congress from debating a bill?

No. I don’t. Three main reasons. 1) It’s only jetBlue. No other airline has a similar policy. Until the others do, the pressure will remain on. 2) JetBlue’s policy doesn’t cover all the issues that most proposals for a PBOR do. It’s just about delays. 3) It doesn’t have sufficient teeth.

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.

Others have pointed out further flaws of the jetBlue plan.

Bottom line, jetBlue’s policy is an okay conversation starter, but it’s not the final word.

Reader Steven writes:

What do you think about Mike Boyd’s commentary that all the journalists (and bloggers?) who call for a bill-of-rights are idiots?

Well, I’ll respectfully disagree. He has a lot of opinions. So do I. If he wants to consider a reasoned set of arguments for an increased set of passenger rights as the impassioned plea of “nitwit consumerist gadflies,” then let him. I think he’s far too dismissive of the actual problems that are endemic to the airline industry. It’s not just one or two flights. It’s the policies and practices that allow such things to happen.

Sure, some politicians are grandstanding now, but that’s just what they do. At the end of the day, the policy that results is what matters.

Reader S A asks:

A PBOR’s rights sound great, but how would a PBOR be enforced?

I assume a claim would be filed with the airline. Yes, passing a bill of rights will create hassles for the airlines, the airports, and everyone in between, as they point fingers, pointing out whom to blame. I initially felt that a PBOR would be difficult to implement for precisely such reasons. But as commenter Oliver pointed out, that would be the airline’s problem, not yours. If a regulation exists that mandates a minimum threshold of service, then it should be up to the airline to meet that threshold, if necessary by putting pressure on vendors, airports, and regulatory bodies to make sure it happens.

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?

Click the YouTube box to watch:

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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Here we go again. Just weeks ago, American Airlines was criticized for leaving hundreds of passengers sitting onboard their planes for hours and hours, instead of letting them disembark and return to the terminal. Now, jetBlue repeated the mistake. At least three planes — flights 751, 351, and 850 — were kept on the tarmac for as long as nine hours.

In a statement, the airline admitted that it was not solely due to snowy weather, but also because of “arrivals that we were unable to move to a gate within a reasonable amount of time, due to all gates being occupied.”

Again: Why can’t they call for a bus to bring passengers back to the terminal?

Anyone affected directly by these delays by sitting on the tarmac for more than three hours will at least receive an apology, a full refund, and a voucher for a free flight. (Clearly, jetBlue’s public relations staff learned from the American Airlines debacle recently.)

Though this was awful for the passengers on board these flights, the fact that another incident like this has happened so soon after the last one potentially gives a bit of momentum to the Passengers’ Bill of Rights. (Petition here.)

Related:
- Recent posts on the proposed passengers’ bill of rights

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The major airline alliances — StarAlliance, oneworld, and SkyTeam — may be in for some competition. JetBlue is linking up with Ireland’s AerLingus to create what may be the blueprint of an international discount alliance.

It’s too early to declare this a “real deal” yet, but in a few years, it might be a contender. Aer Lingus is already quitting the oneworld alliance on March 31, 2007, following its decision to be more like a discount carrier. Unlike its Irish brethren, Ryanair, Aer Lingus still flies widebody planes long-haul and has a business class cabin, so it’s not quite a discount carrier. It’s in that same intermediate space as US Airways, calling itself a low cost carrier, but still featuring legacy carrier networks and services.

Much like Aer Lingus isn’t quite a discount carrier, the proposed alliance is half-baked at this point. There isn’t even any codesharing on deck. Rather, by the end of summer 2007, each airline’s website will feature a “button” to the other’s website. Whoo.

A global discount alliance might work, and other discounters are toying with alliances already. AirTran and Frontier have an agreement allowing cross-selling and mileage-earning. Southwest and ATA have a similar deal.

Alliances are a mixed bag: On the one hand, they offer you a broader range of destinations to book on a single ticket, ostensibly with point-earnings, mutually-recognized status, and a global network of lounges, etc. to boot. But they’re never as smoothly integrated as the marketers claim. (For some more discussion of the downsides of alliances, see here. For some more color on the pros and cons of codeshares more generally, see here.)

In a “traditional alliance,” in which two ostensible competitors work together to sell each other’s flights, there’s a risk that consumers lose. For example, Lufthansa and United both fly Washington to Frankfurt, but since they cross-sell each other’s flights as codeshares, they don’t really compete. The companies are given a license to collude on pricing. It’s a fair assumption that fares creep up when codeshares crop up on the same routes.

But a jetBlue-Aer Lingus alliance may be different in this regard. JetBlue doesn’t fly to Dublin, and AerLingus doesn’t fly within the United States. No overlapping networks, so no collusion is possible. Win-win, for airlines and consumers? We’ll see.

What they need is a good name. BlueLingus?

Related:
- The shortcomings of airline alliances, and Star Alliance in particular

Remember when jetBlue announced it would take out a row of seats, primarily to save on labor costs, but simultaneously adding a few inches of legroom? I noted at the time that the front of the plane was getting the bulk of the benefit. More room than the back, plus easier boarding and exiting (at least at airports where the airline didn’t use the air-stairs.)

I predicted then that jetBlue would “eventually start charging a premium for the seats in rows 1 through 11.”

Looks like my prediction was right:

JetBlue is working on a plan to reserve some of it roomiest seats for higher-paying passengers after it completes the reconfiguration of all of its A320 aircraft next month.
[…]
[CEO David] Neeleman said JetBlue management is convinced some of the public’s highest-paying travelers don’t fly JetBlue today because it doesn’t provide a first class section or a way to get the better seats at the last minute. Neeleman said the airline is working on a program to make up for that.

“To the extent we hold out a few of the 36-inch seats for the highest-paying customers, that’s probably the smart thing to do,” he said. But Neeleman added, with 34 inches of pitch for the rest of the seats, he’s not worried other customers will feel short-changed.

It may not be a full-fledged first class cabin, but the front of the plane is now effectively premium economy. You can’t pre-reserve seats there on a cheapo ticket. Unlike United’s Economy Plus, which is reserved for United elites until the day of the flight, jetBlue’s system doesn’t rely on status.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but face it, the days of egalitarianism at jetBlue are over. JetBlue is becoming a more “normal” airline every day.

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Jared Blank found a promo code for JetBlue online, but the deal is even better than he says. Sure, you can fly from New York to Pittsburgh one-way for $11 plus tax, if that floats your boat, but the code is valid nationwide, not just on that short flight. You can save $17 each way or $34 roundtrip off any JetBlue fare, including the rock-bottom cheapies.

To get the discount, you have to start your search on the coupon code page here to start. In the “promotion password” box, enter “SEVENTEEN” and click enter. Then run your search as normal.

Yes, it’s a promo aimed at young girls who read Seventeen Magazine. Yes, as an adult male, I worry about using that code and getting tagged as a perv by the feds. But no, that wouldn’t stop me from using it anyway to save some green on airfare!

Book between January 13 and February 14, 2007, and complete travel by February 14. Consider this an early Valentine’s Day love note from “Seventeen” to you, with every “i” dotted with a little heart.

JetBlue is removing a row of seats from each of their Airbus A320s, giving passengers more legroom: at least 36 inches of seat pitch in rows 1 through 11, and at least 34 inches in rows 12 through 25.

The move, which is expected to be implemented by March 2007, isn’t entirely charitable. Taking out seats allows them to cut the number of flight attendants on board each flight:

JetBlue estimates a net savings of $30 million over five years by removing six seats from the A320 fleet, as a result of reducing the inflight crewmember team to three, and by reducing the weight of the aircraft by approximately 904 pounds, which will lower the fuel burn. That figure includes lost revenue opportunities as a result of selling six fewer seats per A320 flight.

Stinks for flight attendants, who just had their available positions cut by 25%. But it’s good for passengers, who see two inches of extra legroom. This is about the same as Economy Plus on United, which is reserved for United elites and those willing to pay a small premium to get the extra room.

But hold on: This turns the front of the cabin into a premium section, something the airline never had before. The old configuration has more legroom in the back of the plane, as a sort of tradeoff: The back rows get more room, but the front rows get to exit the plane faster (and less engine noise).

Now, however, the new layout means the front of the plane gets both the benefits of being in the front of the cabin AND the best legroom. Effectively, it’s a premium economy section.

Will JetBlue eventually start charging a premium for the seats in rows 1 through 11? I’m betting yes.

More like the long-haul edition… Round ‘em up!:

Airports feeling more like the post office
It’s not because of the lines. It’s the signs reading “WANTED” with photos of criminals. But airports won’t display run-of-the-mill criminals. Oh no. They’ll feature wanted-posters for terrorists. But honestly, why limit the posters to terrorists? Why not seek out a whole range of wanted criminals? After all, will Osama really be catching the 10:30 flight to Pittsburgh?

Free jetBlue tickets
Buy a ticket to London on Eos Airlines, get a free ticket on jetBlue. Membership in jetBlue’s True Blue frequent flyer program required. (Via the Cranky Flier)

Halfway to a free ticket on Southwest
Register by January 31, 2007 for Southwest Rapid Rewards and get 8 credits, halfway to a free flight. The promo is aimed at the Washington, DC market but seems to be open to anyone. (Via View from the Wing)

The War on Margarine proceeds apace
Loews Hotels are banning transfats, phasing in various bans over the coming months. No margarine will be used their kitchens, or available for your morning toast. Will a foie gras ban follow?

What’s in a name?
Brazilian airline Varig, a shell of its former self, is renaming itself “Nordeste.” Will they remain in Star Alliance? Will anyone care?

Speaking of Brazil…
It’s both a good day and a bad day for the pilots of the Embraer jet that survived the mid-air collision over the Brazilian jungle. They were finally allowed to leave Brazil and head home to the United States, where they were held (but not under arrest) since the incident over two months ago. However, they’ve been formally charged with involuntary manslaughter in the accident and have promised to return to Brazil for the trial. Blaming the pilots for the failures of the air traffic control system appears to be the Brazilian government’s m.o. Shame on them. For near-daily updates on this affair, Joe Sharkey’s blog is the place to go.

EU expands “borderless” travel
The European Union is expanding the number of countries that fall under the Schengen Treaty’s rules for travel between states. Under Schengen rules, you don’t need to undergo passport controls when you move between participating countries. If you’re flying in from outside the Schengen zone, you’ll be fully screened. Of EU members, only the UK, Ireland, and Cyprus will NOT participate in Schengen. Non-EU members Iceland and Norway participate; Switzerland joins next year.

Helicopter service to Newark Airport
US Helicopter is adding Newark to its roster of airports served from the heliport in downtown Manhattan. Service begins at $159 each way, with a scheduled flight time of 8 minutes.

Richard Branson calls for electric tugs at airports
As part of its re-entry into the Chicago market, Virgin Atlantic called for O’Hare Airport to employ electric tugs, to pull planes from the gate to the runway. Doing so would apparently cut aircraft emissions on the ground by 18%. Da Mayor is intrigued…

Looking to boost revenue, jetBlue is planning to roll out a new set of items for sale in the cabin. While you’ll still get a free blanket and pillow, if you want a nicer one, you can pay $5.

Same plan for headsets. The basic model is free, while the nicer version will cost $1 more. I’m sure it’s not a Bose, Shure, or Sennheiser, but still.

The danger, of course, is that the quality of the free, basic models will gradually go down, in an effort to make the sale for the upgraded version. But at the end of the day, the airline is still offering these basics for free, unlike the low-cost carriers in Europe. (And heck, headsets cost money on most US carriers these days…)

JetBlue, the airline whose in-seat televisions pay you nice compliments, just announced their routes in the Chicago market, effective January 4, 2007. It’ll be the first time the airline has flown to the Windy City: 2 flights a day to/from New York-JFK, and 2 flights a day to Long Beach.

And of course there’s a fare sale to go with the new routes. $36 each way, plus tax. I priced out an itinerary from Chicago to Long Beach that’s $91.10 roundtrip, all-in. That’s quite cheap.

The legal mumbo-jumbo:

Service begins on January 4, 2007. Fare requires a 14-day advance purchase. Tickets must be purchased on or before October 27, 2006. Travel must be completed by February 15, 2007.

Now let’s just keep the pilot alertness experiments to a minimum, okay?

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