JetBlue TrueBlue - Jetblue Help!!

OK i am brand new to this forum and Jetblue so if i am posting this wrong please feel free to move this post where needed. I tried to take my first flight on Jetblue. The flight was cancelled as we were walking up to the counter due to needing a part for the plane (fine) and we were told we had to rebook ourselves with another carrier (did not expect that but fine). What is not fine is the fact that the price with the other carrier was double what we paid and the answer is just too bad so sad. They did give us a $50 voucher but that doesn't even come close to covering the cost difference. So to all your Jetblue experts out do you have any advise on getting back the money i lost on this experiment?:td:

Welcome to FlyerTalk!!

There is actually a forum here dedicated to jetBlue and the TrueBlue program and this thread should find its way over there shortly.

If they canceled the flight then you are entitled to a full refund of your fare, not just $50. That is covered by section 26 of the jetBlue Contract of Carriage (CoC). You are entitled to the $50 voucher, too, as part of the jetBlue Customer Bill of Rights (BoR), defined in 37.C of the CoC.

JetBlue also should have offered you a rebooking on the next available flight they are operating, but otherwise they will wash their hands of your problems. That is one of the significant limitations they present as a carrier. They do not have partnerships with other carriers to handle situations like this and their ability to recover in such situations is grossly underwhelming.

You really don't have much of an angle to get your money for the new ticket reimbursed unless you have travel insurance. At that point the insurance should cover the claim.

Welcome to Flyertalk, Jamie642
Please continue to follow this discussion in the Jet Blue Forum..
Thanks.
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

The flight was cancelled as we were walking up to the counter due to needing a part for the plane (fine) and we were told we had to rebook ourselves with another carrier (did not expect that but fine). What is not fine is the fact that the price with the other carrier was double what we paid and the answer is just too bad so sad. Welcome to Flyertalk, Jamie642, and welcome to the sadder-but-wiser community of JetBlue customers.

"Too bad, so sad" should be the airline's ad slogan, because that's all you're going to hear when you fall into a situation like this. JetBlue will refund your full purchase price if you choose not to wait around for the next available flight to your destination (which could be days later). But they will not book you onto another airline or pay the difference between the JetBlue ticket and a ticket on another carrier.

Example: you book a JetBlue ticket from A to B that costs $300. You get to the airport and the flight is suddenly cancelled. You are offered a choice of the next JetBlue flight to your destination, which leaves two days from now, or a refund. You're heading for a wedding, so you take the refund and buy a ticket on another airline, which -- it being the very last minute and all -- costs $700. JetBlue refunds your $300, you pay $700 for the new ticket, you're out another $400.

Too bad, so sad. JetBlue will do nothing for you.

Sorry, Jamie642. It's what you sacrifice for the jetBlue experience!

The check-in agents were really cool, as were the FA's with the free snacks, and they finally got you to your destination 3 days later. What else could you ask for? :confused:

:)

To the OP, welcome to FT!

sbm12 provided some helpul insight in his post regarding the CoC and BoR.

As for not getting to your destination "within 3 days," please realize that very few cities have such scarce service. Therefore, that's usually not an issue. It does, however, have a dramatic negative effect on your travel plans if you're on one of those few routes. Most cities have high frequencies, and JetBlue can also often route you through another blue city. Good luck; please do keep us posted!

As for not getting to your destination "within 3 days," please realize that very few cities have such scarce service. Therefore, that's usually not an issue. It does, however, have a dramatic negative effect on your travel plans if you're on one of those few routes. Most cities have high frequencies, and JetBlue can also often route you through another blue city. Good luck; please do keep us posted!

I think the big problem JetBlue has is during weather in JFK, when it really can be 2-3 days before they can get you on a flight. Take, for instance, transcon JFK-BUR flights. There are 3 or 4 per day of those. On a weekend when loads are high, canceling even one flight can disrupt up to 150 passengers. Funneling 150 passengers through already full flights to BUR or LAS (where they can connect to BUR) is difficult, and results in people being stranded for days. This causes a cascading effect (150 people in BUR trying to get to JFK, for instance, are also now stranded). Since JetBlue's west coast network isn't exactly strong, it's hard to route people where they need to go on time. Hopefully interlining in 2010 will help with some of this, but I don't know how willing JetBlue will be to put pax on other carrier's flights.

Hopefully interlining in 2010 will help with some of this, but I don't know how willing JetBlue will be to put pax on other carrier's flights. Their refusal to do so now is KILLING them. I was in BOS one afternoon last summer trying to get home to SEA when a late-running BOS-JFK flight blew up > 100 connections, mostly to major cities like IAH, DEN, SEA, SFO... at that time of day there were dozens of options available for getting on your way, on about seven or eight other airlines, but none of them were available to passengers on our flight who were told, one after another, you'll get to IAH tomorrow at 200p... you'll get to DEN tomorrow at 1030p... etc. The ones who'd never flown B6 before were in utter disbelief. At times like this you feel like a complete idiot -- and an angry idiot -- stuck in the JetBlue bubble, forced to choose between a LONG delay, with hotel / etc. at your expense, and a very expensive walk-up ticket on another carrier, also at your expense.

As for not getting to your destination "within 3 days," please realize that very few cities have such scarce service. With 75% loads any city with 1x daily service that suffers a cancelation will have 1/3 of its passengers confirmed 3 days late. Even with 3x daily it would be a full 24 hours later for a confirmed seat. Yes, there is a chance of no-shows and standbys getting out earlier, but the confirmed seat may be days out. It can be worse with a connection as that means finding a seat to the hub and then a seat out after that.

Most cities have high frequencies, and JetBlue can also often route you through another blue city.There are still a number of 1x daily transcons that muck things up pretty good when there is trouble.

This is why on JetBlue you should book flights earlier in the day, so that the later flights can back you up to some extent if there is a cancellation.

Similarly, this is why you should avoid booking the last flight of the day on Southwest. (Southwest has many more routing options and lower load factors, so you are quite likely to get where you're going without a huge delay, but all their planes stop flying after midnight or so.)

I agree that fixing this problem would help customers choose JetBlue, but I'm not sure that it would be economically sound. For one thing, it would take years to win back people who had a bad experience and won't realize that the policy changed.

In principle, the lack of interlining and the number of routes with once daily service is a major downside of flying jetBlue. I can definitely see how this would be a major turn-off for travelers, especially business travelers, who can be faced with multi-day delays as a result of a cancellation, or have to shell out significant sums of money for a last-minute ticket on another airline.

On the other hand, my family and I have had very little luck interlining on legacy carriers that apparently participate in said agreements. In practice, "too bad so sad" seems to be their answer to similar problems, as well.

I've had family members stuck for most of the night on a Continental delay (when a Delta flight on the same exact route, an alliance partner of Continental, was on-time and had available seats for a while). And, I had a family member stranded between point A and point B due to an emergency landing at a half-way airport, where American refused to even release passengers' bags for most of the day, let alone interline them on another carrier to their final destination. Ultimately, American continued the flight as a bus to point B, thus not technically canceling the flight (only delaying it 8+ hours and turning a plane into a bus), and therefore claiming that interlining was not a necessary or available option for those passengers (nor was the flight refunded, since a bus ride is apparently equivalent to a plane flight for contract of carriage purposes). (This was a particularly bad deal for those passengers who missed connections at Point B and were thus further delayed and inconvenienced upon deplaning, err, de-bussing).

Thus, while I completely accept the argument that a lack of interlining agreements is a major drawback of jetBlue, I haven't found interlining to be a major benefit of legacy carriers. Is there some secret to getting interlined that I just haven't figured out? Is it a privilege reserved only for first class passengers and very-frequent-flyers?