Friday, February 3rd, 2006 at 11:33 pm
“When we were tunnelin’ out, we happen to hit the main sewer line. Dumb luck that!”
We took off around 11PM from Montgomery, Alabama. We ended up there after a 7 or 8 hour delay due to a computer failure on our first flight. This new one is a snazzy AirBus with leather seats and working TV’s in the backs of the seat. I watched the last 5 minutes of Fargo, and now it’s Raising Arizona.
That, my friend, is perhaps one of the finest films ever. Well, perhaps after The Big Libowski: no one will ever figure out which one is better, so why try?
“Well…OK.”
What’s remarkable (and I mean that in the Godin sense), is that the plane-full of 87 people, who’d been waiting for 8 hours in a little airport, eating only Subway and the slowly dwindling bar, broke out in genuine, appreciatory applause for The Pilot and, more importantly, how he’d handled the whole situation.
It was like a commercial version of The Stockholm Syndrome: the captors identified and befriended their captors.
“But the doctor explained that her insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.”
The whole time, The Pilot gave us frank, truthful updates along the lines of, “I have no idea what’s happening. They said the [rescue] plane would be here at 7, and it’s not. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Or, “I know how you feel. The crew and I have been up since 5AM.”
The Pilot didn’t bull-shit us, or even put on a “everything is fine” face. Meanwhile, he was constantly on the phone to “The Company,” it seemed, wheeling and dealing on our behalf. I over-heard someone saying that jetBlue doesn’t have a large customer service department: The Pilot and crew are the customer service department.
“I need a baby, High! They got more than they can handle! Don’t you come back without a baby!”
To mix over naval, The Pilot made it understood that he was in the same boat, but that he had the power to make it better. Can the same be said of most any other customer service encounters? You’re always having to ask for supervisors, climbing the chain up, and making a general turd of yourself just to get what the first line of customer service should have given you in the first place.
“Yup. He’s awful damn good. I think I got me the best one.”
In the end, we got:
- A free, use anytime round-trip ticket to anywhere jetBlue flies
- A free Subway sandwich.
- Free TV access and movies (sadly, no interesting pay movies, but the Cohen brothers cam through).
- Free Taxi from JFK to hotel.
jetBlue must have blown $10,000-20,000 on this boondoggle: the overtime for the crew and the people in Montgomery, flying down a new jet, the free flights, the wasted time, the sandwiches. But, more importantly, instead of a planefull of pissed off, never gonna fly jetBlue again people, they got a “tube” full of applause.
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