I really don't like articles like this. They do more bad than good. I will admit that having aircrafts going off-line to get fixed/upgrated is never good, especially when they are new planes. However, B6 is not the only ones expierencing this. Air Canada is sending their planes to YYC or BNA to get fixed also (funny how the article didn't mention that).

I would like to add that B6 did a decent job improvising by hiring ExpressJet to cover their shortage in aircrafts. The down side is that the ExpressJet jets are not as new (comparing the two fleets), they are smaller, and they don't have TV's. And that's just the direct impact to the costumer. The loss to B6 includes running 2 aircrafts, paying 4 pilots instead of 2, and 4 FA's instead of 2. Which means these expense are going to run up, inreturn the customer may end up paying more in the long run. The upside for the consumer is that there are not going to be any extensive cancellations

AC doesn't go to market highlighting its good seats, DirecTV, etc. JetBlue does. Thus, when B6 has to take planes out of service and replace them with planes that don't offer what they advertise, it is a bigger deal.

First off, I never said AC did have the IFE with the leather seats.
Secondly, B6 is offering their $25 vouchers for the incovience. Normally, you have to speak up and they would give you the vouchers no problem. With this perticular event, B6 is doing it for everyone on one of these flights before anyone even asks about it. AC offers no personal IFE ever or automatic vouchers for effected flights.
Lastly, when is it not a big deal for any airline to take their fleet of a particular plane off-line for software overhauling? (I know they are not all going off-line at the same time but every E190 will have to come off line for repair.)

You are not understanding the point. B6 differentiates itself by its product. When it can't provide that product, I believe that is newsworthy. When AC has to bring its planes out of service, it is replacing them with similar planes. They don't, after all, promise leather seats and DirecTV.

I do understand the point. However, when these planes go out of service, where are the replacements with the personal IFE's? We obviously don't have enough to do this project on our own which makes contracting a necessity. You can't use the DL Song planes (too big, besides we got our own A320's with IFE's). CO, DL mainline, UA, NW, AS, FL (although they have XM), and US along with ExpressJet all don't have any personal IFE system systems. Obviously, any contracting to outside carriers will not have the IFE.

In light of that, B6 has 2 options if they want to get the planes in a physical condition they should be: A)contract out to a carrier (obviously without personal IFE's) or B) don't fly at all. Therefore, my question is which option is better?

Your changing the goalposts. No one is arguing that they should stop flying. You're arguing that AC should have been mentioned in the news report. I argue it should not because B6 swapping out planes is a much bigger deal than AC doing so. Why? Because of the way B6 markets itself. If AC had massage chairs on its flights and all their commercials said so, then it would be significant if they had to swap our planes as well.

In my eyes the switching of the aircraft is a big deal from a customer stand point. Like magiciansampras stated we sell many of our tickets based on the premise that you will have good IFE at your seat and you won't have to fly on an RJ. That's part of our promise. Now we can't fullfill that promise so we need to do something about it. Our customers expect all these things because that's how we brand ourselves.

From an operational stand point it really isn't that big of a deal. There currenly isn't another airframe out there that we (embraer) could lease to fill in for the departing 190s. The markets that the 190s serve are markets that are still to small for a 320 to work into with out burning money. If AC pulled a 190 they could easily put in a 319 with out much of a problem. Not to mention they don't specifically market their IFE, like magiciansampras said. We could go with out the 145s from ExpressJet while the 190s are pulled out and sent for the update. However if/when a 190 goes tech, we wouldn't have an operational spare to put into it's place to keep the flight on time. That's the whole reason for the 145s is to take the load off the remaining 190s and minimize cancellations.

Ok...I'm glad that we agree about B6's necessity to fly. I also do agree that this news worthy. However, the article made no mention of any other carrier having a problem with the E-190. I'm not asking the news company in Richmond to make a huge story out of AC either. It just doesn't do B6 justice by leaving the reader assuming that JetBlue is the only airline encountering this technical problem. After all, it's an Embrear problem that is having effects on AC and B6.

For RIC pax, B6 is the only airline experiencing this issue. Sure it wouldn't hurt to go into more details on what is going on but the audience is the travelling public in RIC, not a group of aviation industry insiders.

Also, in some respects it is a B6 issue because they chose to go with v1.0 model equipment. If everything was running fine with the plane, B6 would be receiving its fair share of praise. As things are not going so smoothly, they are receiving their fair share of bad press.

If we were discussing an article in Aviation Week and not the local Richmond paper, then I'd agree with you.

But since AC doesn't serve Richmond, would mentioning that AC is experiencing similar troubles really be germane to this article? Not if I were the reporter's editor. YMMV.

We, all of us at FT.com, know that this issue with the software installed on the E-190 is a problem that steamed from Embrear, not JetBlue. However, like AC, JetBlue is stuck in the middle of this mess and the attempts at cleaning it up. I fully agree with all of you the pax in RIC are suffering from subpar service on the middle two JFK flights. Yes, there are no IFE's like adverstised. Yes, they are on ExpressJet's E145's, a smaller plan. However, service is not being disrupted at a highly noticable level and vouchers are automatically being given. Besides, the only reason I would bring AC up in the article is to show that JetBlue is learning how to cope with challenges. They've recieved enough bad press from the past month's events and have a big black eye in the view of the public, espicially in RIC. It is not fair for making the pax go through this, but it not fair to fully leave it as an exclusive problem to JetBlue (and leaving the fault with them).

I just checked the seatmaps for a BOS-BUF R/T that I have at the end of the month, and both flights were switched out to ExpressJet

Today on my shift the first day of XJet in BOS was fairly smooth considering the lack of time our station had to prepare for the operation. We utilize gate 33 which is our overflow gate. We typically have two "wingtip" flights depart 25 mins apart from each other. Our first flight to IAD left ontime at 1820. The other flight left 40 mins late due to MX in IAD earlier. The aircraft I hopped on for a second had no XM ...

Here's a photo:
http://i17.tinypic.com/2e1a8fq.jpg

Overall I think the operation in the customer's eye is minimal. Although it is a significant downgrade in a/c and services, the airfare that is commonly purchased on these flights, the $25 voucher, and the relatively short duration of the flight >hopefully< make up for it.

Happy Travels.

Please be advised I am posting this on personal behalf, this is not an official posting from JetBlue.

I just commuted into BOS for work and rode on the 145s. All of the customers seemed very understanding and did have questions. I tried to answer some of the questions for them but it seems the operation is going very smoothly. The ExpressJet Crews are a great bunch of people and it's a pleasure to have them on the property.

The inflight service is very close to normal. Same snacks, drinks and what not but there is no TVs or Radio. I was talking with the pilots and apparently some approval for the XM hadn't come from the FAA yet so that's why their 145s aren't equipped with the radio yet.

I'm glad we where able to secure the 145s for the next couple of months as we are booked at or near capacity and we would have many angry customers if we had to cancel flights because we didn't have the aircraft to operate.

Doesn't the 145 have less seats than the 190? If so, won't there necessarily be lots of folks turned away? Or are they running more 145s than 190s to make up for the smaller bus?