Skittish Jet Blue opts for safe over sorrier

JetBlue made darn sure yesterday there was no repeat of the Valentine’s Day ice disaster that crippled its flight operations and damaged its corporate reputation.

Alerted to even the possibility of a light snow storm, JetBlue [JBLU] on Sunday night canceled two flights to and from Boston’s Logan International Airport scheduled for yesterday morning - rather than risk angering more passengers after its bungled response to an ice storm earlier this month.
Customers were contacted Sunday night and told that their flights between Boston and New York were canceled. Passengers were rebooked onto other flights, said JetBlue yesterday. “We were being proactive,” said JetBlue spokeswoman Jenny Dervin.
In all, JetBlue canceled 76 flights yesterday, most of them at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. That represented about 20 percent of its operations.
JetBlue - which implemented a new “customer bill of rights” after it canceled more than 1,000 flights nationwide last week and the week before - wasn’t the only airline to nix flights yesterday, after a couple of inches of snow fell in Boston.
Continental canceled four flights at Logan and United canceled two. Delta Air Lines Inc. reported 175 canceled flights throughout the Northeast.
But all eyes were on JetBlue.
While not nearly as overwhelmed yesterday as earlier this month, JetBlue still had hitches - including a more than three-hour taxiway wait at JFK that forced the carrier to refund customers $100 under its new compensation plan for inadequate service. JetBlue also gave those passengers their choice of either a refund or accommodation on a future flight, a spokeswoman said.

source:www.business.bostonherald.com