Guest Post : Does JetBlue Think Its CEO Talks To Much?

Today’s post on Flying With Fish is from Seth Miller, author of The Wandering Aramean (also a BoardingArea blog). When Seth is actually home in New York City, rather than sitting in a seat flying somewhere, he builds some fantastic tools for travelers, such as a Mileage Run Calculator, a Flexible Fare Search, an Airline Rewards Search, a Single Bucket Inventory finder, and quite a few other great tools for flyers.  You can follow Seth on twitter at @WanderngAramean.

As far as airline engagement with social media is concerned, JetBlue is generally considered to be towards the top of the list. They were an early adopter and have built out a sizable official team to handle the @JetBlue account. Somewhat more interesting, however, is the participation in Twitter of so many senior executives of the company, right up to the CEO. And following the tweets of @DavidJBarger you never know what you’ll see.

The content of the tweets ranges widely, from his die-hard Detroit sports fan comments to notes about work travel (lots of trips to Orlando for new hire orientation) to bits about supporting non-profits that the airline partners with. The past few days, however, have seen a much different tone. Following a tweet from the main company account about following along as the boss visits various airports:

Apparently that unleashed a flood of new route/destination requests to the CEO. That, or he just decided to finally respond to all the queries outstanding. Either way, the past few days have seen many tweets on route planning, including some interesting insight on what destinations might be coming and which probably will not.

In the northeast there were discussions on Providence, RI:

Long Island’s Islip got a mention:

And Massachusetts’ Worcester actually got some action, including confirmation of an upcoming visit from the company. Hard to believe that Worcester is a serious option right now, but they’re taking a look at least.

New Haven, Connecticut also got a mention, but probably not the news the locals were hoping to hear:

Nashville used to be a station served by JetBlue and their Embraer aircraft still see maintenance done there on a regular basis, but no commercial service. That doesn’t seem like it is going to change any time soon:

And down in Florida there are some interesting indicators on which markets have potential and which don’t. Nothing particularly surprising, but still some interesting insights:

On the international front, it looks like the company is holding to its current plan of avoiding long-haul service on their own, choosing partners instead. Hopefully more of those partnerships will develop along the lines of the recent
Hawaiian Airlines deal making them actual partnerships, not just interline connections for customers.

Doesn’t mean that all international expansion is off the table though:

None of this is insider information, to be sure. Little of it is even surprising. Still, it is great to see the boss getting involved and taking such an interest in customer inquiries. Well, I suppose it is great unless you run the Corporate Communications group:

Oopsie.