JetBlue chief vows to fix airline's customer service breakdown

The founder and chief executive of JetBlue Airways, his voice cracking at times, called himself "humiliated and mortified" by a huge breakdown in the airline's operations that has dragged on for nearly a week, and promised that in the future JetBlue would pay penalties to customers if they were stranded on a plane for too long.

The chief executive, David Neeleman, said in a telephone interview Sunday that his company's management was not strong enough. And he said the current crisis, which has led to about 1,000 canceled flights in five days, was the result of a shoestring communications system that left pilots and flight attendants in the dark, and an undersized reservation system.

Until now, JetBlue and its low fares have enjoyed overwhelming popularity and customer satisfaction ratings.

The crisis began Wednesday when an ice storm hit the eastern United States. Most airlines responded by canceling flights en masse, sending passengers home and resuming their schedules within a day or two. But JetBlue thought the weather would break and it would be able to fly, keeping its revenues flowing and its customers happy.

On the contrary, JetBlue's woes dragged on day after day. On Saturday night, for instance, the airline said that the 23 percent of flights it canceled on Saturday and Sunday would also be canceled on Monday. The confusion led to angry exchanges between customers and employees, prompting JetBlue to call out security personnel and cancel even more flights.

Founded in 1999 as a low-fare airline, JetBlue was often cited as a favorite among passengers and expanded rapidly, but its systems to deal with the consequences of bad weather did not keep up with the growth, Neeleman said. The company's low-cost operating structure may have been a contributing factor.

"We had so many people in the company who wanted to help who weren't trained to help," he said. "We had an emergency control center full of people who didn't know what to do. I had flight attendants sitting in hotel rooms for three days who couldn't get ahold of us. I had pilots e-mailing me saying, 'I'm available, what do I do?'"

The division of the company that locates pilots and flight attendants and directs them to their next flight assignment is far too small for an airline of JetBlue's size, Neeleman said. He vowed to train 100 existing corporate office employees to work in that area when needed. Within two weeks, the area can be better backstopped, he said, and within 30 days, "flawless."

Then again, Neeleman has been wrong before. On Friday, he told The New York Times that operations would be mostly back to normal on Saturday. That morning, the company canceled 23 percent of its flights and shut service to 11 cities entirely.

On Sunday, Neeleman said that throughout the chain of events, he had overestimated JetBlue's ability to find people and get them into position.

The basic problem, he said, was that JetBlue's communication system amounted to a school's telephone tree on a snow day: The ice storm had left a large portion of the airline's 11,000 pilots and flight attendants far from where they needed to be to operate the planes, and JetBlue lacked the trained staff to find them and tell them where to go.

The reservation system was also overwhelmed, with customers unable to get through to agents to check on a flight. The company employs nearly 2,000 reservation agents in the Salt Lake City, Utah, area, many of them women who work at home. Neeleman said he would adjust their work agreement to require them to work longer hours during difficult periods.

Neeleman said he would announce a recovery plan on Tuesday. He is hoping to win quick forgiveness from customers and to demonstrate that he takes the airline's failings seriously.

"This is going to be a different company because of this," Neeleman said. "It's going to be expensive. But what's more important is to win back people's confidence." He did not say if higher fares might be in the offing.

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