Virginia Buckingham of the Boston Herald this week wrote a misleading article accusing Jetblue of a bait and switch. She had a bad experience on a flight and blames Jetblue for the situation. We felt the need to correct her misleading statements and errors.
Buckingham flew from Washington-Dulles to Logan and comments, “Instead of the expansive Airbus 320 with legroom and TVs, JetBlue put its Dulles-to-Logan passengers on a Continental Express Jet, a flying partner.” First, she never would have received an ‘expansive Airbus 320’ as these flights are normally operated by Embraer 190 regional jets. While they do have the in flight systems, they are smaller aircraft.
Instead, she was on Expressjet, which as we reported in a previous post, were hired by Jetblue to avoid having to cancel a series of flights. As their CEO put it:
“JetBlue is going to contract ExpressJet to operate 2 lines of E190 flying (out of 120 daily lines of flying) while we rotate our E190 aircraft through a special modification line. We will perform scheduled maintenance to correct some issues that interfere with the reliability of the aircraft. If this were any other airline, we would just cancel the two lines of flying through April and call you up and say “Sorry. Here’s your new flight info.†But we don’t want to be “just another airline.†The customers on those flights bought a ticket to fly at a certain time, so we are going to fly them at that time, using ExpressJet ERJ145s. It’s not the JetBlue Experience you wanted, so anyone from one of these flights who wants to rebook for a later time or take a different flight that day is more than welcome to, but we think most of our customers will appreciate the fact that we partnered with ExpressJet to get them to their destination reliably.”
So, it isn’t a bait and switch…if she didn’t like it, she could have changed her arrangements without any expense. It is not a bait and switch if an airline is forthcoming with the information.
Then the plane ran low on fuel circling over Boston, which is nothing any airline can do about. Airplanes could carry more fuel, but it would raise costs, as the weight of the plane with the fuel contributes to the amount of fuel burned. They carry only a predetermined extra amount. The plane was diverted to T.F. Green Airport in Providence, where Jetblue doesn’t fly. Her final comment assumes Jetblue will try to weasel out of their Bill of Rights and her contention it is the fault of the substitution of Expressjet aircraft.
We have defended Jetblue from the beginning of its bad press. Airlines have done some horrible things, but the media have latched onto Jetblue excessively of late. We certainly are on the lookout for horror stories from other carriers, as we are tired of reporting on media reports of Jetblue. One blogger commented, ” The obvious solution to this problem is to ban journalism so these note-takers can no longer afford to fly.”