I used to go out of my way to fly JetBlue. I love the live TV. And the goofy slang that all their copy is written in (“Hold on a sec, buddy – processing your order now!”) I love the fact that the planes don’t smell like old food. The staff is friendly. The fares are cheap. The website is clean and sublimely usable. What’s not to love?
But all of this seems to be changing for the worse.
I first started getting nervous when I read about the horror of the planes stuck out on the tarmac this past February, when winter storms caused the cancellation of over 1,000 JetBlue flights. I knew some of the people stuck out there for over 10 hours and it truly sounded like a nightmare. One guy told me if it wasn’t for the TVs in the back of every seat there would have been a riot on his flight.
Nobody was sorrier than founder and CEO David Neeleman who issued a heartfelt apology, instituted a Bill of Rights, called himself “humiliated and mortified”, and began paying restitution to the affected passengers. It was heartening to see him so hurt and upset by this; you got the sense that he deeply cared about the experience of his customers and would do whatever he could to right JetBlue’s wrongs.
But a mere one month later, fearing a similar situation as a winter storm approached, JetBlue pro-actively canceled over 200 flights in and out of NYC. Other airlines canceled some flights too, but not as many. And JetBlue wasn’t back in the air nearly as fast as their rivals. People were upset.
Then they lowered their operating margin forecast and 2007 profit outlook. Then they dropped from their #1 position in the annual Transportation Department airline performance report card.
And then it happened to me.
Today I flew from JFK to Fort Myers, Florida and JetBlue lost my luggage. That in and of itself is not a shocker. I’ve had luggage lost before.
What really got to me was JetBlue’s incompetence in dealing with the matter. They had no idea what could have happened to my bag. No way of tracking it down. No information for me other than “hopefully it will be on the next plane"
Plane after plane came in and it wasn’t on any of them. Then the baggage staff simply threw up their hands.
I was really surprised. When I asked how it was possible that my bag, which was checked in along with my wife’s on a direct flight, somehow managed to slip away while hers made it through, one of the JetBlue staffers said, “All we can really do here is hope for the best – but I’m an optimist!” He’d earlier said to me, “We have no way of tracking bags, which is either a good thing or a bad thing.” I explained to him that it was indeed a very bad thing.
This just wasn’t the type of “rah rah, customer’s always right, we’re in this together” service I’d come to expect from the JetBlue brand. It felt more like they’d just given up on all of that. After an hour or so on the phone with various people in various departments I managed to find someone who said he thought my bag may have been mis-loaded and was now in West Palm Beach. He said they’d endeavor to get it back to me sometime tomorrow. But getting this info (assuming it is correct – I still don’t have my luggage) was like pulling teeth.
It’s sad, really. I miss the old JetBlue. I hope they get their mojo back at some point before it’s too late. In the meantime I’m sticking with American.
Update: It was like clown college over at JetBlue for a while today. My bag didn't show up this morning like they said it would. Nor was it on the next flight. Nor the next one.
I called the main baggage office in Utah (the folks who'd told me to expect it this morning) and the guy who answered the phone told me "we don't deal with day-to-day people like you." Thanks for that. I called over to the JetBlue baggage department at JFK and they had no records of the bag arriving there from West Palm nor leaving again for Fort Myers. The worst part was when the woman I was talking to said, "we have so many lost bags here we don't have time to enter data on all of them." That was frightening to hear.
Eventually the bag did show up here in Fort Myers about 24 hours after I did. I had faith that it would make its way to me at some point but throughout this process I was continually surprised at how overwhelmed the JetBlue personnel were by what should have been a relatively simple affair. At every turn I was told by someone "we have no information on that" only to make my own calls to some other departments and uncover more information myself. I ended up talking to seven different people in four different offices in three different cities over the course of 24 hours in order to put the pieces together. That was the core of my frustration here, and I think is at the heart of some of JetBlue's current growth pains.
Shoutout for most helpful employee goes to someone named Victor in the Salt Lake City baggage office. If you ever find yourself in the same situation I was in I'd give a call over to that office at 866-538-5438 and ask for Victor. He was a rockstar and was the only person to actually dig up info for me on my bag. He seemed to feel my pain.
Thumbs-down for worst service goes to someone named Mike in the Fort Myers baggage office. He was one of the least sympathetic, most unhelpful people I've dealt with at an airline. Which is saying a lot. When I called him to say I was looking for a lost bag he cut me off to say, "it's not lost, it just wasn't on your plane." Um, thanks. If you could tell me where it was I might have that opinion as well... Very un-JetBlue if you ask me.
Finally, if you're hitting this post in a Google search for "lost luggage Jet Blue" or something along those lines, you may want the following phone numbers:
JetBlue Main Baggage Office: 866-538-5438
JetBlue Baggage Room @ JFK: 718-632-6355
JetBlue Baggage Expediter @ JFK: 718-632-4986
Here's to hoping JetBlue doesn't become the next People Express, as this MSNBC article fears it might: "'They can't keep running off a legal pad and No. 2 pencil,' says a longtime industry executive." Indeed.
