14940674

How long will the E190s be flying with the tired, old seats and version of LiveTV?

BearX220

Well, I appreciate your view, but what management may not appreciate is that most of the customer base does not have to "live with it." The crews and front-liners can work as hard as ever but if people perceive the hard-product aspects of the B6 experience are in decline, it will (A) propel some to consider competitors and (B) perhaps discourage discretionary travel. Outside JFK and BOS you're pretty dependent on the leisure market. Not many gotta-go-regardless customers for you in the hinterlands. JetBlue isn't really in a position to tell those discretionary flyers they have to just "live with" whatever curtailments the airline dishes out. You're not an electric utility or something. And if big factors appear roughly equal, I guess I'd opt to earn some meaningful miles elsewhere.

PWMTrav

This is really it, right here. It's the commoditization of the product. Yes, objectively, it still may be better than the legacies, but remember that just as wall street wants earnings growth, customers want growth in the sense of an increasingly better product. Where the two come to a head is that JetBlue is basically saying now that they can't meet Wall Street's earnings growth demands while meeting customers' demands for an increasingly better product (presumably because consumers in the past haven't been paying for that better product, they've just shopped on fares). Instead, JetBlue is - as a matter of consumer perception - decreasing the quality of their product. They are, in essence, regressing a bit toward the things their competitors all uniformly do. The product may still be better than the legacies, but it won't be perceived as being as much better as it is now.

Your customers don't have to live with it. Some of them in this thread are signaling that they won't, and that they'll shop fares instead. I'm not making any assessment of whether that's objectively right or wrong in the circumstances, but it is an observed reaction to the message.

For my money, that's the right attitude. Unfortunately, it's now on JetBlue to figure out how to message that they are not commoditizing their crews - the perception is that the product is being commoditized. I hope they sell that. As a US elite, I can't tell you how many rude crews I've had over the past few years. I'll certainly change carriers for better crews, which is why I minimized my US travel this year in favor of AS whenever possible (and DL when not).

Bigger picture, I'm not sure this is a good long term change for investors. I get that not enough people were paying for the premium coach experience (B6 compared to other carriers). Cramming more people and overhead baggage into the tube is probably a short term revenue fix, but it does come at the expense of image if I'm reading this thread correctly. Whether that matters regarding long term profitability will of course play out, but I don't like seeing any company that I might invest in impacting its value proposition overnight like this. (I haven't had, and currently don't have any position in JBLU in case anyone is wondering).

BearX220

It's bad for JetBlue in the long run, but we live in a short-run world. They are throwing over key differentiators, and an image built up since 2000, to satisfy some Wall Street jerks for a couple of quarters. Then those jerks will advise something else that's stupid: eliminate the snacks, eliminate IFE, add a "comfort-minus" class down the back with even less pitch. There'll be no end to it.

The tragedy of today's business environment is not only that it encourages companies to commit long-term suicide to hit short-term goals, but that so many managers are willing to go along.

AMflier

I'm trying to picture the new layout. I can't figure out how they will do it without a reduction in EMS seating and / or modifications to the galley space.

Please let me know if I'm missing something.

Going from 150 to 165 seats means adding 3 rows on one side of the aircraft, and 2 rows on the other, unless they mess with the exit row seating.

There are 18 rows of standard seating, 25 rows total. Losing an inch of pitch on standard seats gives them 18" to work with.
Accounting for the new seats:
Losing an inch of seat depth gives them 18" + 25" or 43" = 1 row + 13"
Losing two inches of seat depth gives them 68" = 2 rows + 2"
Where are the the extra 3 seats going?

PWMTrav

Duplicate, sorry.

sbm12

Expect to see the SpaceFlex galley product on board with the retrofit. It puts two lavs in the back (behind the rear doors rather than in front of them) and frees up space to squeeze an extra half row in. Airbus claims the lav and galley otherwise is more spacious but I call ........ on that. JetBlue is already using overhed bin space for galley overflow and this is unlikely to help that problem.

The seat itself will likely still be fine. I've tried the new A321 seat and I like it well enough. I'm not worried about that in the short term. But I am worried about the bigger picture and what is going to happen beyond just these changes. Not likely for a couple years yet, but more will come, I'm afraid.

As for the claim that changes like this always happen with a regime change, this one is different. This time around it was the same Wall Street analysts who demanded Barger's ousting who are also pushing this new agenda. The company is no longer dictating its own course. That's most worrisome indeed

JetBlueFA

Poor choice of words on my part. I am fully aware that our customer base may now feel alienated by the sudden change and they may very well take their business elsewhere. I didn't mean it to sound like you just need to "live with it and shut up about it". I meant it to sound like, "the change is here and now you must live with it in the fact that you may very well take your flying to our competition." I know that a very large number of our customer base is now very upset with the change and rightfully so. As many have pointed out we had be anti-wall street with our policies and overnight they perceive us as selling out to wall street and caving to pressure.

zippy the pinhead

I commend you on the obvious pride that you take in your work and your employer. Not to hijack the thread, but I'll be straight with you: a nice can of primo craft IPA, perhaps two, would make me a lot less concerned about my seat. Being able to pre-order the same before boarding, d@mn, that would be cool, just sayin'. Though good beer isn't everything, it is a well-appreciated comfort, and an ice-cold can of Sculpin covers a multitude of sins.

A couple of weeks ago I needed to get from LGB to SMF and because the B6 schedule (late or early) didn't work for me I made the mistake of flying WN. It was absolutely a mistake, and my wandering heart will think twice about wandering again. In other words, you folks at B6 have some room to maneuver with the seat pitch before I stop flying Jetblue. Just don't mess with the width.

bmg42000

Are they going to change the boarding process so that there are fewer issues with overhead (on my last couple of flights a lot of people were carrying on luggage) that will occur with luggage fees. Will they amend the bill of rights to say if your luggage does not come out within 20 minutes your fee will be refunded (or if it gets lost) . There are ways to turn this into a positive . Getting the luggage to the belt in 15 minutes would be a good way to start.
I did like the gate agent at Sav the other day who had a sense of humor. I hope some of this increased revenue goes to the employees.

radiowell

This is exactly my point. How would they cram those extra 15 seats?

As a reference, US A320 has 150 seats. But if you have ever been on one of those, you know that even the F seats feel cramped, legroom wise. (Don't believe me? Try sitting in row 3 with the person in front of you fully reclined). And the economy has about 30-31 pitch.

So over at US, 138 Y seats with 31 pitch and 12 F seats for 150 total, where everyone is cramped for legroom (except exit rows). And there will be 15 more seats on B6?

sbm12

The lavs and galley at the back get moved around to make it fit.

sltlyamusd

I get that they can move one of the rear lavs to occupy part of the aft galley space to fit in 3 more seats. Or simply eliminate one of the two rear lavs, although I can't believe they would do that. But, even with that taken into account, it's hard for me to understand how they can add 2 additional rows of seating and only cut pitch by one inch. Right now they have 23 rows which means (38*5)+(34*18)=802. If you divide that by 25, you get an average seat pitch of 32.1 inches. That's assuming they don't alter the exit row configuration.

Also, keep in mind, when JetBlue starting flying the A320 back in 2000, they configured it with 162 seats at a pitch of 32 inches. Now, they are claiming they will have 165 seats with 33 inch pitch...

Aewanabe

Agree fully with this. I'm amazed that instead of our communications department pointing out the product changes NOT happening (E90 pitch, EMS pitch, WIFI will remain free due to corporate sponsorship), we let the message pander solely to investors whom most likely don't fly on us anyway. It really set the wrong message with our customers and is embarassing to those of us that care about the product and our corporate image.

Dieuwer

After a pop in quarterly earnings due to the bag fee and higher load factors, economics would dictate that JetBlue no longer will be able to command a fare premium over its competitors. Instead, they will need to compete on price and be in line with their competitors. I think that will translate to less money for JetBlue instead of more, compared to the current situation.