Originally Posted by
Aewanabe
Full disclosure: I am a JetBlue pilot, and not thrilled about these changes.
Thank you for your insight.
Originally Posted by
Aewanabe
If you are elite on AA, great, you have some upgrade options and admittedly TB and Mosaic are quite weak when compared to AAdvantage. If not, well, you've relegated yourself to a transcon on either a 737 or 757 with likely no AVOD/individual monitors, no free WIFI, and 31-inch pitch.
One point of contention... the JFK-LAX/SFO routes are serviced by new AA B321s (with actual F suites & J product, all lie-flats). Without getting into a Boeing vs. Airbus argument, at least those routes out of B6's homebase aren't suffered in beaten-up slaveships. While I would point out that the 738s are being updated, it's a slow pace and in the near future, you're correct that one is likely to get an older AA plane.
The problem for your company here is that if someone flies B6 enough to be Mosaic, they probably would fly enough to be an AA elite as well. With B6 shooting themselves in the foot and taking away their own advantages and further amplifying AA's pros (MCE seating for some, free checked bag(s), chance to upgrade, points into a decent FF program), why would a regular reasonable passenger choose B6 over AA?
The blue chips are good... but not that good
Originally Posted by
Aewanabe
In internal communications the company has indicated EMS seat pitch will remain at 38 inches.
The pitch is not changing on the E190.
The A321 product, which our customers seem to really like, was rolled out with 33 inches of pitch in basic coach. Nobody grabbed the pitchforks for that one.
I've never understood why seat distance is measured in pitch (from one point on the seat to the same point on the next seat)... one would think actual kneeroom (from front of cushion to seat back) was more important, but I digress.
For B6's sake, I'm glad to see they're keeping EMS at 38" and not changing the E190. But why in the world would that fact NOT be included in the announcement??? You have some grade-A dummies in the communications department if they didn't think to try to mitigate this news by trumpeting EMS and relying solely on fluff (see below)
Originally Posted by
Aewanabe
The company did a very poor job of rolling out this issue to our customers, which is disappointing. The communication indeed had a tone of "this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you".
I wish it hadn't happened, and with reconfigurations not scheduled to begin for 17 months it may still not. However, the writing has seemingly been on the wall for the last few quarterly calls... At a minimum I'd like to see Mosaic members receive the EMS product for free to increase the value proposition, but that's not my side of the company.
Piss poor job. I got the feeling that they thought the public wasn't intelligent enough to see through the smokescreen, and de facto insulting a customer bases' intelligence is dangerous ground indeed.
It would have been better if they had just admitted they had to start charging for bags, but, e.g., the 1st checked bag charge is still cheaper than the competition's (if that actually were the case). The spin backfired, and now it looks like they were trying to hide the truth (which they were, but they just made it 1000x worse for themselves).