Fiasco(s)

I’m probably a bit late to the party but here goes. The saga that was JetBlue operations last week just goes to show you running an airline is not an easy business. Kudos to JetBlue though for coming out and admitting their mistakes and trying aggressively to patch up their relationships with customers, employees and investors. I like the way CEO David G. Neeleman took the whole thing so personally and was very vocal about it. They also released a pretty nice “Passenger Bill of Rights” for future events and all those affected by the delays, which has spurred activity on the Hill about the passenger rights bill, which had been struggling to gain much traction in Congress. Interestingly, Wall Street initially did not look too kindly upon any of JetBlue’s reparation efforts, plunging the stock a few points, but it’s back to prior levels as of today (NASDAQ:JBLU).

Of course, JetBlue failed quite spectacularly, but it’s from this failure that we have to learn and grow. Prior to last week, the consensus was that JetBlue was the best run airline in the industry. If this could happen to them, why couldn’t it to the others. I don’t think it’s that much of a threat to airlines like United and American, since they have a bigger operations setup and have enough staff bases to counter such an emergency. But that’s not to say they are immune to this, all the airlines need to sit up and reconsider their strategies to counter different situations. The industry as a whole is just recovering from a long history of bankruptcy and monetary losses, and unless they tighten the reins and be on the ball, the vapor thin veil of profitability from last quarter they are hiding behind, will vanish just as quickly as it came.

Being an American Airlines frequent flyer, I shudder to think what if what happened to JetBlue befell AA. There would have been bloodshed in the terminals, for sure.

Or it could all be sogrady’s fault for being in the area.