A pleasant ride on JetBlue

I flew to Seattle last week for the Microsoft Symposium on Social Computing. The best price I got for the flight was from JetBlue. I know they hit some turbulence earlier this year, but my experience was very good. I was impressed with a few things. For one, I had never experienced live network TV while flying before. It’s such a simple thing, but it feels absolutely revolutionary: I can change channels… wow. As a bonus, I happened to be in the air during one of the few recent games where the Red Sox beat the Yankees. I’m sure that fact alone made me feel kindly disposed toward the airline.

And once you get used to the fact that food isn’t part of the ticket price, it stops being such a big deal. Quit crying about it! Once you pull those prices apart, the trip gets cheaper and the food gets better.

I liked the fact that the entire plane was set up for coach. I never thought of myself as having a problem with the notion of First Class seating, but it was surprisingly… soothing without those plutocratic bastards and their oh-can-I-get-you-another-drink pre-takeoff mimosas and their insufferable don’t-pee-in-our-potty lavatories and their goddamned Rich Uncle Pennybags top hats.

Another nice touch: when the captain was introducing himself and the crew before the flight, I suddenly realized he was standing in the aisle looking at us. Strike a blow against the gated community! Look your pilot in the eye!

And my conference was excellent, so all in all it was great trip.

Anybody else have any JetBlue stories?

9 thoughts on “A pleasant ride on JetBlue”

  1. I flew JetBlue last week for the first time, Boston to Bermuda. Brand spankin’ new E190 jet, polite crew and captain (even invited me into the cockpit when I asked what the plane’s name was and they had to open the window to look). Then we took off and leveled at 5000 feet, circling Logan for an hour.

    It turns out our landing gear wouldn’t close (hey, if it has to get stuck in a position, I’ll take down). We landed after burning off fuel, and as we pulled up to our gate they were pulling in a replacement aircraft. Less than 30 minutes later everybody and their baggage were back on their way to Bermuda.

    Bummed about being late? Sure, but maintenance problems happen, and they handled it professionally and kept us informed. The impressive thing was getting that replacement plane in place so dang quick. The cabin crew, pilots, and the entire Logan JetBlue customer service staff was in their cleaning and prepping the plane. Pretty impressive.

  3. I just flew JetBlue last week for the first time, too! It was a short flight — Boston to Buffalo, and I was similarly pleasantly surprised by getting to channel surf from my seat. I couldn’t find a way to turn off the TV, though. Is there a button I missed? I thought it was strange that you weren’t allowed to stop watching (though why would I ever want to turn off Bravo anyway?); why would that be?

  5. All the instructions to operate the TV’S (on/off/brightness/sound, etc…) appear on channel 13.
    or you can ask a Flight Attendant how to!

  6. Many thanks to Ro and AJP for the tips. Don’t you think, though, that an “Off” button would have been a good idea?

  7. why do you need another button to look at? the flight attendant in the beginning announcements tell you to “……..hold the minus button down until the screen goes dark”. probably would serve everyone better if people actually started listening to the announcements these days.

  9. I want a flight attendant to say “Please pay attention to the button that says ‘listen to the flight attendant to find out what this button does'”.

    –JMike

    p.s. remember the old Billy Crystal bit: “you look maahvelous”? I think he once said “I may say that ‘you look maahvelous’, but You. Look. Maahvelous.” look out:

    I may say that “I may say that ‘you look maahvelous’, but you look maahvelous”, but I may say that “you look maahvelous”, but you look maahvelous.

    I’m having flashbacks to an old LISP programming assignment on recursion…

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