Straight from the horse’s mouth:

NEW YORK, Aug. 4, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) — JetBlue Airways Corporation (Nasdaq:JBLU), together with CleanBrands LLC, an innovator in the creation and development of products devoted to improving the health of the sleep environment, today announced the creation of The World’s Cleanest(tm) travel pillow and blanket kit. Effective today, customers on JetBlue flights longer than two hours may purchase the $7 eco-friendly pillow and blanket, which includes a coupon for $5 off the future purchase of any item at Bed Bath & Beyond.

First of all, I love the headline:

No More Dirty Pillow Talk

Gotta love how quickly things change as soon as you start charging for something. Now we just need UA to start charging for food internationally so they can advertise “No more crappy garbage which we call food.” Of course in the meantime they’ll continue to advertise even the coach meals as gourmet and the 777′s as luxurious.;)

The World’s Cleanest(tm) travel pillow features an advanced technology called MicronOne(tm), a fabric that blocks all micro-toxins larger than one micron in size, such as dust mites, mold spores, pollen and pet dander.

 Cricket…. cricket…. cricket…. we’re talking about a blanket on an airplane here, right?

I have mixed feelings. It’s certainly one of the better revenue enhancements out there. Airplane blankets are absolutely nasty. I’ve seen people blow their nose in them, wipe their greasy McHands on them, not to mention cough on them as if they’re coming down with some serious disease. So that’s the plus side, not to mention you can take them home, not that you’d have much use for them anywhere else…

On the down side it’s more nickel and diming, which we don’t like!

DENVER – A woman faces federal charges after she allegedly lit up a cigarette on a flight and then assaulted a flight attendant, forcing the plane to land in Denver.

JetBlue flight 643 was on its way from JFK airport in New York City to San Francisco when the pilot had to make an unexpected landing at Denver International Airport Tuesday afternoon.

According to an arrest affidavit filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office, 35-year-old Christina Szele of Woodside, NY, “smoked in her seat; yelled obscenities and racial epithets” and later punched a male flight attendant in the face.

(full article here)

Simply amazing. You’d think people would have heard about being arrested as a result of actions on a plane in the past and would learn from that, but I guess that doesn’t stop some people.

I figured I’d make a consolidated post with some of the stories/news I’ve seen in the industry this week. 

• Many airlines are raising the price for liquor/food onboard. AirTran is raising the price of alcoholic beverages by a dollar to $6. Starting June 1, United is raising the price of their “fresh food” items to $7, up from $5. The snackboxes are still $5, which is a pretty good deal. Even at $7, it’s not a bad deal since the selection is pretty good, in my opinion. American raised their prices from $5 to $6 for both alcohol and fresh food. Ultimately I can see the need for all of them to raise their prices, although I’m not sure how smart of a move it is. I guess we’ll see, but it seems like $5 would be perceived as reasonable, while some may consider $6 too expensive for a drink. I guess it all comes down to elasticity of booze and food on planes.
• JetBlue announced they would defer the delivery of 21 A320 aircraft, a move which makes complete sense given the state of the industry.
• According to a thread by a reputable FlyerTalker, UA will be reducing the frequency of LAX-HKG to four times a week over the summer, and will be discontinuing the service on September 2. There are also rumors of large scale layoffs as well as more capacity reduction, so we’ll stay tuned for that.
• Northwest has matched United’s offer to give anyone that contributes at least $50 to the China Earthquake Relief fund 500 miles.
• Delta’s FA’s have once again voted down a union by a sizeable margin. This shows that they must have quite a bit of faith to not be unionized in such tough times, so kudos to the company as a whole.
• Speaking of Delta, a complete nut (or maybe I shouldn’t even say that if I don’t want to be sued for several million dollars) is suing Delta for $1 million for some flight delays and poor customer service. I think the article speaks for itself, but this is just crazy. Even forgetting about the million dollars, how do you spend $21,000 for a hotel, rental car, clothes and flights? Sounds pretty nutty to me…

This is quite possibly the strangest story I’ve read in a long time, probably because it makes zero sense. From MSNBC:

NEW YORK – A New York City man is suing JetBlue Airways Corp. for more than $2 million because he says a pilot made him give up his seat to a flight attendant and sit on the toilet for more than three hours on a flight from California.

???

the pilot told him to “go ‘hang out’ in the bathroom” about 90 minutes into the San Diego to New York flight

OK, here’s my first point of confusion. Whenever I fly a US airline on a flight with only two pilots (meaning no relief pilots), they’re always blocked off by the drink cart. I’ve never seen them go into the cabin to deal with passengers unless there’s a total emergency, and an FA’s jumpseat being uncomfortable doesn’t seem to fit in that category.

the flight attendant complained that the “jump seat” she was assigned was uncomfortable, the lawsuit said.

As an FA you’d kinda know how comfortable the jumpseat is, no?

When Mutlu expressed reluctance to go sit in the bathroom, the pilot, who was not named in the lawsuit, told him that “he was the pilot, that this was his plane, under his command that (Mutlu) should be grateful for being on board,” the lawsuit said.

I can picture certain pilots saying a lot of really dumb things. This simply isn’t one of them, and if this really were a command by the captain it’s not one I would have followed.

The aircraft hit turbulence and passengers were directed to return to their seats, but “the plaintiff had no seat to return to, sitting on a toilet stool with no seat belts,” court papers say.

Ah, now I can see the $2 million figure coming into play. I can imagine that the passenger suffered at least $1 million worth of emotional distress as a result of his fear of turbulence. Hmm, wonder if this is the same type of passenger that takes off his seatbelt before getting to the gate, uses the restroom when the seatbelt sign is on, etc.

OK, I’m totally confused here. I won’t ramble on more, but I’d love to hear what really happened. There’s obviously a pretty big piece of the puzzle missing here, and I’d certainly like to hear what it is. The $2m figure sounds like total hogwash, but that’s not surprising at all.

Since I’ve had less time on the web than I expected the past several days, I went through all of the airline forums on FlyerTalk this morning and was pleased to see that nothing too major has happened. Here are some of the minor things I did note:

• Air Canada reported a first quarter loss of $288 million. It appears to not be all that bad since their operating loss was substantially less than the same period last year.
• American raised the cost for same-day standby to $35. They still have a better deal than UA, which seems to be what matters most since they usually match each other tit-for-tat.
• JetBlue announced they would delay their launch of LAX service. For the reasons named in the article this seems like a very wise decision. ‘Nuff said.
• Southwest has begun selling energy drinks on their flights. Energy drinks on an airplane? I’ve never had a Red Bull, am I missing out?

From View From the Wing:

JetBlue is offering $25 off and 50 TrueBlue points for tickets purchased with an American Express Card by May 13, 2008 for travel between May 1 and June 18, 2008.

On top of the discount, this amounts to “fly two, fly free” which is a pretty good deal.

Now that’s a damn good deal, kind of like Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights except it’s the airline industry in this case. I’m sure this is only the beginning of promotions throughout the industry this year, so stay tuned!

Now that Lufthansa will be using JetBlue as a feeder partner out of JFK and apparently they’ll be linking their FF programs somewhat, the question has to be asked, will they be joining the Star Alliance? I’m guessing the answer is no in the short run since it seems like LH is still trying to figure out how exactly it will work, but in the long run I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible, right? I’m somewhat familiar with the policy for admittance into the Star Alliance, but I’m not exactly sure how it would work in this case, with LH having a stake in B6 and all. I know United has veto powers, but maybe Lufthansa could influence United not to veto it (since they’ve given them quite some loans over the years). Of course I would totally love if JetBlue joined the Star Alliance, since I could fly to JFK without connecting in either ORD or IAD, have a great product, and to top it all off earn miles!

 Only time will tell, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in the next year or so.

MSNBC reports:

NEW YORK – The head of JetBlue Airways Corp. said Tuesday the low-cost carrier expects to boost its noncore revenue by 60 percent this year, in part by charging passengers extra for more legroom.

“What we want … is the ability to upsell,” Chief Executive David Barger said.

Speaking at an investment conference in New York, Barger said “demand is solid across the JetBlue network,” and he assured analysts the carrier is “in the middle of a momentum story,” in spite of industrywide worries of a slumping economy and sharply rising fuel prices.
….
Barger said JetBlue, based in Forest Hills, N.Y., soon expects to roll out a program called “even more legroom” that will offer passengers in the first few rows and emergency exit seats of its larger aircraft additional space for an added fee. A spokeswoman declined to provide details of the plan, but Barger made it clear the single-class carrier is not planning to start offering business-class service.

Man, the airline industry has no shortage of stories in the past few days, and I see no end in sight. No doubt JetBlue is a great carrier in their category, and their legroom is probably the best in the US. The issue here comes with the fact that the back of the plane has 34″ of pitch while the front has 36″ inches. Unless they plan on adding other services, I doubt you’ll see many people willing to buy-up from JetBlue’s already generous pitch for just 2″ more. I’m curious to see what the exact details are, but something tells me this wont work too well…