What JBLU Did Not Tell You About the $599 Pass
 

I (used to) fly Jet Blue weekly between IAD and JFK and occasionally to other places so I bought the $599 pass from Sept 8 to Oct 8. What they failed to mention is that they discontinued 40 -60% of their flights between IAD and JFK. There are NO flights that arrive JFK in the morning any more ..at all. They went from 4 or 5 frequencies per day to 2 or 3, depending on the day of the week. Needless to say, I think they could have publicized their massive schedule change in advance of selling me the pass...which is now basically useless if one needs to travel to JFK in the morning. I had been quite happy with Jet Blue until this. I do not know if there are any other city pairs similarly affected. I complained to JetBlue and they told me it was only one frequency on Tuesday and Wednesday that was affected...which was BS.

Interesting. When did you buy the pass and when did they announce the frequency changes?

I do find that B6 tends to mix up their schedule a ton. One of the reasons why they don't let you book out 330 days like many other airlines.

[QUOTE=magiciansampras;12350913]Interesting. When did you buy the pass and when did they announce the frequency changes?
QUOTE]

I just checked OAG and it looks like the last time JetBlue revised their schedule for IADJFK between 9/8 and 10/8 was on 6/12. This was two months before they started selling the pass and the OP had one week to research this before they stopped selling pass. It does seem silly that they don't offer a morning flight into JFK, a nice 8AM flight arriving an hour later should work.

The flight schedule was available on or before March 6 for flights through October 31. This time of year is typically a trough in air travel demand, and this type of frequency reduction is common in September.

I also downloaded their pdf version for Aug09 which was available when the pass was on sale and now I got their Sep09 version. I was surprised to see how they reduced the capacity. For example, IAD-JFK flights 1300 (dep 6am), 1302 (dep 708am x7) disappeared completely, 1304 (dep 1119am x6) became daily, and 1308 (dep 430pm x6) disappeared on Tue and Wed.

Normally an airline has a fixed number of aircraft that are re-allocated for seasonal demand. If some flights are deleted, others must be added somewhere. The exception is that winter weather increases the average stage duration, giving a small percentage reduction in capacity available from a given fleet.

IAD-JFK has seen a significant reduction in capacity because it has been an absolute bust since its launch. However, it is "needed" in order to connect one large metro area (DC) to the rest of JetBlue's network via JFK.

That being said, as someone else mentioned, the last OAG change was in mid-June, so your complaint shouldn't be directed at JetBlue. It was your fault that you failed to look at the schedules ahead of time before making such a large purchase. Do you expect JetBlue to publish a press release every time they add or drop a flight?

The agent's response about the frequency reduction was in reference to the fact that Tuesdays and Wednesdays only see 2x on JFK-IAD, while the other days see 3x.

One can only expect a schedule release on the airline's website for more than one month at a time, if the airline is serious. Criticism towards the OP I find rather distasteful and misplaced, when the schedule information on airline's website is not easily available for a longer than a month at a time.

Why? You presuppose the schedule is only way to check availability.

Did you know you can actually buy tickets beyond the current month, and thus check on availability?

I bought the AYCJ to fly on the four weekends. Before buying the pass, I checked availability to about 6 destinations on each of the weekends. I can't imagine that one would buy the AYCJ without any due diligence:
- For some cities (St. Lucia) there may not be any flights at all during the AYCJ period
- For some cities, the scheduling can be inconvenient
- B6 could have sold out some flights; given that they stopped selling the pass two days early, I thought this was a distinct possibility and re-checked the hour before I bought it.

Yes, one can check availability and notice that some flights advertised in the current pdf schedule do not show up. However, for the domestic flights, I would always assume availability and would check pdf schedule rather than booking website. I find it pathetic Jetblue's schedules are available for one month only in a pdf format. UA schedules as an example might be complicated with all the disc. etc, but they give you a better picture of their operations. All airlines are cutting flights, but if Jetblue knew of their reduced schedules in Sep as opposed to Aug back in June then there is no excuse for not making this information more prominent for people who decide based on flight availability which they would have checked in a pdf format as opposed to the annoying java application.

Fair, especially with the last seat availability of these passes. But if the schedule you are checking is for a different month than the one you are traveling in who's fault is that??

There are other ways to check the schedule beyond the PDF; I happen to use the windows application because I find it easier to navigate but there are others: http://www.jetblue.com/help/timetables/.

As a very regular IAD-JFK traveler (weekly), I must say that B6 has been screwing with the schedule like crazy this year. Flights come in and out like mad - I've bought / schedule changed / refunded / rebooked the same flight at least three times this year in three different months because B6 can't figure out if they want to serve this market or not. I get that it's been a tough year, and I get that maybe this isn't a compelling stage length for them, but I'm tired of getting dumped onto a totally unsuitable flight after my opportunity to buy a competitively priced flight on Another Carrier has already passed.

That said, it still beats CO IAD-EWR ;)

It is possible that the schedule was not final back in June for their entire network and they didn't want to publish something that may change later. Do you know if they are or are not making revisions beyond September right now?
Would you want to make decisions based upon scheduled service in a PDF that may change month after month?

I can't understand this either. What ever happened to schedule integrity? If that happened to me I would avoid them like the plague and fly someone else.

Thats not the way B6 rolls.