Russell's Blog

Over the years, I've grown to loathe air travel. The major carriers are suffering from a deep institutional decay, and airports have turned into a nightmare landscape of law enforcement gone mad. Airports are little pockets of brutal, bureaucratic totalitarianism in an otherwise mostly free country. If you want to know what fascism would look like in modern America, just visit an airport, and imagine a whole city run that way. Fascism in Germany was characterized by the German mania for efficient organization. America doesn't do efficient organization. Fascism in America would be huge, blundering and incompetent. The catchphrase of German fascism was, "Papers, please." In America, it would be, "We can't find your papers." It would be like an airport.

It would be bad enough if it weren't for the surly attitude and lousy service from the major airlines. The IRS is better at customer service than the major carriers. They really are. The first time I had to file a tax return, I didn't even know where to start. I called the IRS. They were polite, answered all my questions, and explained how to fix things if I made a mistake. The told me how to file for an extension, if I needed to. They gave me a list of local certified tax accountants if I wanted more technical advice. They were even cheerful about it. Good luck finding that kind of treatment from an airline official on a busy day.

That said, I've always liked JetBlue. They are one of the few bright spots in an otherwise rotten industry. If there was some way that I could board their flights without having to run the gauntlet of idiotic airport hassle/security, I might actually enjoy flying.

Last weekend was a very bad weekend for JetBlue. Leaving thousands of passengers stranded and angry, it seemed that their effort to be the Good Airline might have finally broken. Fortunately, that seems not to be the case.

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

Sincere apologies are rare in our culture. The best you'll hear in most cases is something like, "We are sorry that this unfortunate thing has happened." So, when the CEO of a major airline sends an email to his company's customers that says, "Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused." He doesn't even blame the storm, or the facilities, or bad luck. This is called "taking responsibility." It's something that grown-ups are supposed to do, but that CEOs and presidents and small children usually do not.

The Passenger's Bill of Rights is a good idea. It's what airlines should have been doing all along.

Taking responsibility when things go wrong is probably the most important function of a leader. It's something that our current national leadership is notoriously bad at. It should come as little surprise, then, that JetBlue is the only US carrier that is a significant contributor to the Democratic party.