FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Benicia, California, USA
Programs: AA PLT,AS,UA PP,J6,FB,EY,LH,SQ,HH Dmd,Hyatt Glbl,Marriott Plat,IHG Plat,Accor Gold
Posts: 10,820
[QUOTE=nsx]
I'll add one more dislike to the OP: the current seat assignment system favors early booking low-fare passengers over late booking high-fare passengers. The legacies have seating preferences for high-mileage customers and sometimes upgrades for full fare. Southwest has a system that frequent customers know how to work to get a good seat virtually every time. On the Southwest forum, people debate ad infinitum which is better. But JetBlue has neither of these systems and puts its highest-paying customers in themiddle seats. That's bad business, IMHO.
QUOTE]
I see this point here, but still beg to differ. As a regular legacy airline customer who recently flew JetBlue (and was pleased) for the first time, I would not have tried it all unless I had the combination of the early booking low fare and the seat choice (including the few extra inches of seat pitch, since I'm 6'2"). As long as JetBlue retains that combination, I'll be back at least occasionally. I don't know whether there are enough regular customers who think this way to make a difference to JetBlue, but if so it will lose them if it terminates early booking seat choice. This feature is a big advantage that JetBlue has over Southwest.