Actually, ~2,300 is the correct number of people to survey to get an appropriate representation of the 310MM people in the US; it is a statistics problem, and surveying 2,300-2,500 folks should give results that extrapolate up with a +-3% margin of error. Nielson does the same thing with TV ratings. The bigger issue with surveys is finding people to actually answer the questions. They are conducted via telephone, and most survey companies don't call cell phones, so there is a significant segment of the population (mostly younger) that is generally excluded. But the methodology is pretty reliable. An email-based survey is a different beast, so I don't know what the rules are on the numbers and response rates and such, but I would hope that they've cast a pretty wide net. As for you as a super-loyal flyer not getting the survey, you may be considered too loyal for it to matter. As someone who flies every trip with the carrier the chances of minor changes causing you to jump ship are rather low. B6 is going after incremental revenue and looking to poach customers from other carriers.

As for focus groups, I'm guessing that B6 does those as well. I've sat on an Amtrak focus group and they actually implemented several of the suggestions that came out of our session, so those work as well.

My biggest beef with this is the idea that the price of a ticket no longer includes "everything" and the list of things not included are not particularly well defined. Want a seat assignment? Cha-ching. Want an exit row? More money. Want to check a bag? That'll cost you. Priority boarding is one that would really irk me.

Other carriers have taken this sort of approach as I noted above and they've gotten away with it, but that doesn't mean that it is the best approach for JetBlue, especially when B6 claims to be trying to differentiate themselves from the legacy carriers, while in reality they seem to just be copying the legacy play book, a few months later, after initially taking all those changes that the legacies were making and using the fact that they didn't do those things as a competitive advantage.

Yes, absolutely it is. Did you take statistics in high school/college? :)

I thought it was, but maybe that's why I flunked out of statistics in high school...:eek::p

Interesting discussion about the survey sample there. The email invitation was sent to a unique address which I use just for jetblue. Interesting enough, I had just flown twice with Jetblue, once just before Christmas, and once a few days prior to the email. The only other time I was on Jetblue was about a year ago. The company Jetblue use is FGI research, and they were offering $10 - this was an effective carrot. :) It was study 1126, if anyone's interested.

From my flight and booking pattern, they should be able to deduce that I fly on at least one other airline, and that I don't view them as a first choice. Reason: I booked multiple one-ways; and only booked a few days before the fact.

Personally, while I won't pay for any of these features, I would have paid perhaps $10 if they would do interlining of bags. This is one of the reasons why I don't fly JetBlue; I would have flown UA or even US if their prices weren't >2x of B6's. And that's even though I would have connections (well, more miles!) with them.

Flying on a legacy airline would also allow for me to not have to exit the secure area and have to deal with the results lines plus TSA. Instead, I could just proceed to the lounge. :D

Another survey?
 

I got a survey a day after my last JetBlue flight but it was all about the experience I'd had rather than what I would be willing to pay more for... did anyone else also get a customer experience survey instead?

About 5 people from every flight get sent the customer service satisfaction survey.

As per jetBlueFA's comment above, they might have changed it and send that survey to 5 random people from each flight. But, a few years ago I recall David Neeleman saying every day, 600 random customers who flew yesterday receive the survey via email. I got it twice I believe.

I did take stats, those surveys are usually performed under not-so-great conditions. ie, wrong people being asked