synzero

So.. I've been a loyal JetBlue fan since the inception of the airline -- it always provided exceptional customer service and comfort, even if not always the best on-time performance. But after a few years away from New York I've started a new job involving a lot of New York travel, and that has drastically increased the number of times I fly JetBlue. I've only flown four round trips so far since starting this new job, and have already encountered the following:

1) On one return flight at T5, kiosk bag tag printing was broken, requiring everyone in the airport to stand in a very long line to manually get bag tags

2) JetBlue IT had some sort of glitch where they claimed to have ticketed my flight, sent me an email to that effect, but the ticket didn't actually go through. I only happened to discover this because I was reviewing my flights online and saw it was in this weird "ticket not issued" state. JetBlue never sent me an email warning me this had happened. Three hours on the phone in the middle of the night and JetBlue refused to take responsibility for the error, claiming that my bank (Chase in this case) had declined the charge. Of course, when I called Chase they said they'd never seen the charge, they had never declined any charge from JetBlue. JetBlue finally agreed to rebook me but insisted I pay a higher fare, even though the entire thing was their fault. I'm planning to file a complaint with customer service.

3) Food quality at T5 has declined. Lucy's Asian Kitchen used to be a decent fast casual Asian food vendor at T5; I actually looked forward to eating there. For some reason the vendor replaced the cooks that used to work there, and you can see from the Yelp reviews that they are understaffed. What's more, the food tastes awful now, and it takes forever. Yelp reviews have plummeted. When I contacted JetBlue customer service they said vendors are independently owned. So? They can't fire the vendor? They don't care about food quality in T5? Given that JetBlue doesn't offer that much in the way of on board food, quality of take out in the terminal is pretty important if you want to eat on the plane.

4) Food quality on board Mint-class planes has plummeted. When JetBlue first introduced the Mint planes, on board food options were excellent. The food boxes were extremely high quality. I just tried their sandwich --- sub-mediocre at best.

5) The one bright spot, on-board free high speed wifi, remains a plus; it's possible even to stream video on it. But -- it's flaky. Cuts out many times during a flight. It's still way better than most airlines -- but other airlines aren't standing still.

Delta has issues, too, such as their dynamic award pricing and the lack of consistently good wifi on all flights. But, they're deploying very high speed wifi across their fleet, and their CEO has announced they, too, will provide free wifi in the near future. SkyClubs are extremely nice and I have free access to them via my Amex Plat. Customer service is quite good. Once my current JetBlue bookings are up I may end up switching most of my business to Delta.