We delayed this flight for connections
 

Thought you'd like to see the world from a B6 crewmember point of view. We were leaving for PWM (Portland, Maine) and we were the last flight of the night. The Fort Meyers plane had 6 connnections on it and we took a 30 minute delay waiting for them. Our captain stood in front of our nearly full plane and explained to all the ontime and boarded passengers what we were going to do. Everyone onboard agreeded, if it was them, they would want us to hold the plane for them.

We simply couldn't leave 6 people in the airport overnight just because they had a GDP in effect that cause Fort Meyers to be late.

The Ft. Meyers plane pulls into the gate next to us. My Captain runs over to the plane to pull our passengers off and a family of four come running down our JetBridge, thanking us all the way. They were so nice when they came onboard and we were happy to see them.

The other two? Well they took their time, strolled of the Ft. Meyers plane LAST, strolled down our jetbridge, with our Captain hot on their tail. They never responded when we welcomed them onboard, took their time getting to their seats and getting settled. During the flight they were in my service section and told (not asked) me that they should have free drinks because of all we put them through!!! :mad:

This Thanksgiving I'm grateful that I'm not related to them. LOL

Happy Jetting

Would the scenario have been different if it was not the last flight of the night?

Good for you, flying4aliving. Presumably you would have left on time if you hadn't been the last flight of the day, but this was a fine pro-customer decision.

Now here's a story from the B6 passenger point of view.

We were up at PWM one afternoon a few months ago awaiting a hop to JFK. The incoming aircraft is on time, but goes mech at the PWM gate. The pax load is full of people making connections at JFK, some to other B6 flights, many to international; the excited couple next to us is heading for Perth, Australia, and quizzing us about how to locate QF at Kennedy.

Boarding, then departure time, comes and goes and the gate agents whisper among themselves but make no announcements. Meanwhile the last alternate flights of the day to JFK or LGA, operated by US, DL Connection, etc., board and leave. Only then do the agents inform the crowd that the flight will operate eight hours late and they will be getting to New York well after midnight. Dozens of connections are blown up. Vacations are wrecked right out of the gate. Because there are only two staff available to guide or rebook 100 customers, it takes hours to speak to a B6 employee. When we dial the toll-free number, it cites high volume and hangs up on us. The Perth couple goes home in tears.

This Thanksgiving I'm grateful I'm not counting on JetBlue to get me anywhere.

Get yourselves an interlining policy and train your out-station gate agents. You simply couldn't leave 6 people at JFK overnight because of an ops delay, but on that day at PWM, B6 destroyed trips for dozens of people because of nonexistent service recovery from a mech delay.

Happy jetting.

(begin ignorant comment) Some people just shouldn't be allowed to travel. (end ignorant comment)

If they were changing to an international flight at JFK then they were traveling on two tickets. Sorry but that's the risk you take when you buy two different tickets.

As an LCC JetBlue doesn't have an interlining policy. You take the risk of service interuptions when you buy a ticket on them; mechanical delays happen. Service recovery from a mechanical delay on JetBlue is flying later when the plane is ready to go.

The crying Perth couple have no one to blame but themselves. They gambled (most likely for a cheaper ticket from PWM to JFK) and lost.

Thanks for acknowledging that there is such a risk when flying JetBlue.

And what is the payoff for taking this risk?

JetBlue's coach is superior to any other carrier's coach product, provided that the flight is on time. That's the payoff. If you bring a good book with you and if arrival time is not critical, you will have an excellent trip.

That's what I thought. :)

Compare JetBlue fares to the legacies. It costs as much or more to fly JetBlue. If you're flying Allegiant, I think your point stands. If you're paying more than DL or UA charge to fly JetBlue, I think coherent service recovery should not be absent from the proposition.

Ah, the time-honored blame-the-customer line. You'll fit right in here on FT. ;) My point was that if B6 had an interlining agreement those folks would have made their flight. Heck, if the PWM gate agents had made a timely announcement, they could have walked down the concourse to DL, bought walk-up tickets, and gotten to JFK in time. It was needless (but typical) B6 inflexibility and paralysis in the face of irrops that ruined dozens of itineraries.

As long as your definition of "excellent" covers "possibly getting to your destination hours or days late." I agree B6 has the best Y product in the US, but when it comes to ops reliability and service recovery, there is a picture of a JetBlue tail in the dictionary under the entry for "crapshoot."

I did not come here to rain on flying4aliving's fine story. I do contend that B6 is not an airline to be relied on, day in, day out.

Yes, if you travel internationally on two separate tickets and it doesn't work out, then you deserve to be blamed.

This assumes a few things:

(1) B6 knew about the delay early enough to have interlined people to other carriers. It frequently happens that mx delays look like a quick fix and its not until they start working on it that they realize how bad it is.
(2) There was room on the DL flight for everyone who needed to switch for connections.
(3) A legacy with interlining agreements would have handled it any better.

To illustrate (3), here's three stories that have happened to me recently:

*QF delays JFK-LAX-SYD flight by 24 hours but doesn't announce the delay until after the AA/UA LAX flights have left. No one can switch to another flight that would get them to LAX in time for another QF flight to SYD/MEL/BNE.
*MH delays KUL-LHR flight by 16 hours as part of my KUL-LHR-JFK itinerary. Delay not announced until after all eastbound options (ex. KUL-SIN-EWR) have left leaving no choice but to take the 16 hour delay.
*DL delays ATL-ORD flight by two hours causing me to miss a connection to MKE on UA (last flight of the day) but agent refuses to reroute on another carrier.

I actually do rely on B6 to get me to BUF from JFK week in and week out. I used to fly US but they are less reliable on the route than B6 (74% on-time for US vs. 84% on-time for B6).

I find it laughable that some think that it's a guarantee you will be delayed on JetBlue. From the October figures (most recent time period available/reported), it seems to be the contrary. Straight from the PR...

JetBlue's preliminary completion factor was 99.7 percent, and its on-time (1) performance was 86.8 percent.

(1) The U.S. Department of Transportation considers on-time arrivals
to be those domestic flights arriving within 14 minutes of schedule.

So, let's see...

Three-Tenths of JetBlue flights did not operate in the month. Additionally, a mere 13.2 percent of flights did not arrive on time. And that's considering ALL flights arriving in excess of 14 minutes late. 86.8% OTP is great, but consider the many flights that are only 20 minutes or 25 minutes late!

Good for you. After the year we've had with irrops and B6, my wife refuses to even consider JetBlue for family travel, which makes things difficult because I cannot consider JetBlue for time-critical business travel. As nsx says, JetBlue may work for you "if you bring a good book with you and if arrival time is not critical." I have no business trips where it's OK to arrive 12 to 24 hours later than planned.

I'm pleased you're happy with JetBlue, although I disagree with your implication that when things go south, it's the customer that's generally at fault for daring to believe the timetable, the "bringing humanity back to air travel" stuff, etc. My only contention is that inventive, sensitive, pro-customer service recovery is absent from the JetBlue experience... and the anecdote that led off this thread is unusual.

The data is clear that JetBlue's incidence of delay is on a par with other carriers. So you have a very good chance of having an on-time flight.

However when a delay occurs it is likely to be longer, due to JetBlue's relatively thin route structure and routing through JFK. A prudent traveler will prepare for this possibility.

That's the long and the short of it.

BTS data is only available for September (October performance was better), but that data shows, of late flights, the average arrival delay:

FL: 40.49
WN: 42.31
DL: 42.63
US: 44.60
NW: 51.09
AA: 53.42
UA: 54.00
CO: 57.23
B6: 60.94

So in September, B6 was about 10 minutes over the average for these carriers, but not an outlier by any means. October data should be better, when it's up.

So, given that overall OTP for B6 is on par with other carriers, and when a flight IS delayed, it's about 10 minutes over what you'd expect on another carrier, I really don't see what all the bruhaha is about.

The bruhaha is not about what happens when things go okay. As you point out, B6 is on-time as much as everyone else.

As posted above, it's that when there is a delay, it's on average the worst of the majors, and when you run a thin route network and won't interline your pax, things go downhill much faster for them.

Beat me to it. This is not about the error incidence rate, it's about underinvestment in service recovery.

"The worst" being, on average, about 10 minutes later.

There's not much that can really be done to solve this. Investing in interlining would really cost more than it's worth, because the incidence rate isn't that high. For every incident where B6's delays are large enough over other carriers to really make it that much less convenient, there are hundreds of satisfied, on-time customers. It's about cost management, and the trade off for not investing in interlining and adding that to the bottom line is having a few bad cases.

If we saw a huge dip in OTP vs. other carriers, or even a huge difference between average arrival delay of late flights, I could agree that the cost to interline is justified. In today's money, I can't say that it is.

Interlining could be a zero-sum game. Maybe JetBlue thinks they'd end up ticketing pax over to other carriers more than they'd receive.

When the scenario happens, it will be too late.

At the philosophical level - the idea of not interlining is standalone versus network, which provides stability and recovery when facing pressure

At the company P/L level, focusing on the cost of interlining ignores the potential revenue upside of business travelers

At the customer service level, telling customers that a certain irrops recovery solution is not cost effective goes against the "bring humanity back to air travel mantra"

At the PR/advertising level, people might interpret "happy jetting" as "happy flying if you manage to get the flights otherwise good luck"

I don't see how you can assert that without knowing what the current policy is costing you.

I live in SEA, where a cancelled B6 departure means a 24-hour delay. I can tell you for a fact the current policy is costing JetBlue roughly the average salary for one frontline employee... that is, the amount my business partner and I spend with UA/NW/DL on flights to NY and New England.

When B6 runs into operational trouble at SEA, the only two options you can give me are: go away and come back in 24 hours... or, here's your money back, go have a walk around the terminal and see if you can buy a walkup from some other airline at 3X+ the price. Neither is remotely acceptable.

How do you know how many potential high-revenue customers book away from B6 on this basis?

Cities where operations consist of one flight per day are usually given priority during IROPs, when possible. For January 1-September 30 of this year, B6 is on par with AA and DL for on-time ops and cancellations for SEA-JFK. AA and DL can interline during a cancellation, B6 can route through LGB and SAN. Or, you can go away and come back in 24 hours, or here's your money back. I never said it was the best situation, but the incidence has become so low as to not be a pressing issue right now, IMO.

Just my opinion.

The difference between us is that you seem to plan for the absolute worst situation possible. Which is fine, we just disagree.

That's true. Sorry -- it's the product of past experience.

Not to hijack, but shouldn't planning for the worst possible regarding one's schedule be something that any savvy traveler does, regardless of the airline involved?

Within reason, of course. If everyone planned for the worst case scenario (read: another 9/11-type closing of all US airspace for > 24 hrs), then no one would plan to fly anywhere. We'd all be driving, or walking.

It's all about setting one's own personal expectations of what can go wrong--I like to plan according to statistics and historical data, but everyone's mileage varies.

Earlier in this thread it was observed that a couple flying B6 from PWM to JFK to connect to an overseas longhaul had only themselves to blame when the B6 leg was badly delayed, blowing up their connection. They had allowed themselves about a four-hour layover. Given the historical data, what do you think would have been a prudent connection window? Six hours? 12? 24? Should people in that situation not fly JetBlue at all?

You seem to be saying that it is silly to plan for the worst case scenario when flying JetBlue... but when a customer takes the timetable at face value and things go wrong, it's his or her own fault. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. I no longer book B6 when I have to be at my destination within 24 hours of schedule. But if that is silly, what margin is not silly? At what point are irrops the airline's fault?

That was a fine connection window, but again, the risk is always higher when you book with multiple airlines. Given historical data, I would've booked it, as well. This isn't a typical scenario, though, and it's hard to assign blame to one entity.

It's not unreasonable to expect to be able to take the timetable at face value, but it would be very prudent to do your homework. Fault can only be assigned for specific incidents -- a WX GDP can't be blamed on B6 or the customer; a MX delay can't be blame on the customer; and a 45 min international connection on another carrier can't be blamed on B6.

It's always silly to plan for the worst case scenario. It's prudent not only in air travel, but in everyday life, to plan for the likeliest scenario. This doesn't rule out having backup plans, but it does mean being reasonable in expectations.

That was a fine connection window, but again, the risk is always higher when you book with multiple airlines. Given historical data, I would've booked it, as well. But, I'd also be aware before doing so that if the B6 flight is somehow delayed outside of historical trends, I'd be SOL.

This isn't a typical scenario, though, and it's hard to assign blame to one entity. It's an absurd suggestion that people in that situation shouldn't fly JetBlue at all, given that any airline and any aircraft can fall prey to a MX problem at any time.

It's not unreasonable to expect to be able to take the timetable at face value, but it would be very prudent to do your homework. Fault can only be assigned for specific incidents -- a WX GDP can't be blamed on B6 or the customer; a MX delay can't be blamed on the customer; and a 45 min international connection on another carrier can't be blamed on B6.

It's always silly to plan for the worst case scenario. It's prudent not only in air travel, but in everyday life, to plan for the likeliest scenario. This doesn't rule out having backup plans, but it does mean being reasonable in expectations.

Because the issue here is not the MX incidence rate but airlines' ability and willingness to offer recovery to the customer at minimum inconvenience, I just really, really disagree.

I'll give you another JetBlue irrops story. My family and I were flying BOS-JFK-SEA this August. Even though the website and concourse displays showed our BOS-JFK running on time, when we got to the gate we learned it was actually running two to three hours late (on a sunny, no-precip day; MX or other ops problem downlne). This naturally blew up many connections, including ours. My son and I were lucky to snag the last two seats on the BOS-SEA nonstop, but my wife had to stay over at the airport Hilton, fly the next day, miss a day or work, and arrived home 16 hours late.

The point is, there are about 25 other ways to fly from Boston to Seattle on a weekday afternoon, on about eight other airlines, and none of them were open to my wife. On a robust network carrier you almost always have multiple options within your own system. When an airline interlines you have many more. I can't tell you how infuriating it was to see the Alaska BOS-SEA nonstop taxi out with empty seats, while my wife retired to a $200 hotel room and resigned herself to missing a day's pay the next day, for which trouble JetBlue sent her a $50 voucher.

She represents permanently lost future businessto JetBlue -- as do, I think, the numerous business travelers at the podium in BOS who were stunned to hear the GA tell them they would be arriving in Houston or Vegas or wherever not at 1000pm tonight, but 4:45pm tomorrow... etc. All those people would no doubt readily conclude that as they really had to be at their destinations for meetings or events tomorrow, they should not have flown JetBlue at all.

And despite your post above, I think you might agree. According to your earlier post about the Perth-bound couple who missed their longhaul because of a JetBlue MX event, since they really had to be there, they had nobody to blame but themselves (for taking the published schedule at face value). Because irrops pax are at the mercy of B6 and must wait to be reaccommodated on the next available B6 flight, whenever it may be, anyone who must be somewhere has to weigh the risk of flying JetBlue very carefully.

I am off from SEA to BTV tomorrow. Because I really, really have to be in place for a Wednesday morning meeting, and can't risk getting there Wednesday night or Thursday, I am flying UA, much as I dislike the experience. That's not planning for the worst-case scenario. That's acknowledging the facts of everyday life at B6: when you are delayed, you can easily be really, really delayed.

That's not acknowledging the facts of everyday life -- not by a longshot. The situation you described, while entirely unfortunate and I do sympathize, is not an everyday occurence by any means. And it is unfortunate that the encounter turned you off to B6 completely.

But I'm pretty sure B6 realizes that it's losing some people this way. And the business decision to forego interline agreements stands. So B6 must have done the math and figured that the attrition rate is acceptable versus the cost (in dollars, effort, etc.) of interlining.

I get that you're the kind of guy who lets a bad experience turn you off to a company. But you have to acknowledge that you're not "acknowledging the facts of everyday life," when, in fact, it's not an everyday occurence.

Pushing the envelope. Sometimes this just works. TPA-JFK lands at 8:31AM,at gate 15, connect with Chicago, which pushes off gate 2 at 8:48. Whew.... Return flight cancelled due to weather in Chicago, wait two days for flight loads to allow Non-Rev travel. Land in JFK, gate 5 at 12:45, push off gate 2 to Tampa at 1:20. It's all about the numbers and weather. No-one can call the odds if a flight is going to be on time or not. If it's a huge issue, leave yourself enough time. Happy Holidays!!

Caphis: Just curious, do you actually work at B6? Because I do, and I have to say I've seen the situation that Bear X220 described several times this year. It's to the point that during the summer IROP season I advise my friends NOT to fly us if they have business travel needs.

I'm very proud of our product but the network reliability is abysmal, especially in markets where we offer only 1-2 frequencies per day. Dave Barger has hinted repeatedly that we will be focusing on improving frequency and reliability in business markets for 2009; I fervently hope this will come to pass.

Thanks for that, Aewanabe. I love the concept and the inflight product and wish the execution / network management / service recovery aspects were as good. Maybe you can get Dave's attention on some of the issues raised in this thread, as I know I'm far from the only one who feels this way.