JetBlue Airlines 2006 Annual Report Download - page 17

High Quality Customer Service
We devote a great deal of time and attention to hiring employees who will treat customers in a
friendly and respectful manner. The importance of providing caring customer service is emphasized in
training. In addition, our policies and procedures are designed to be customer-friendly and include:
• all seats are pre-assigned;
• all travel is ticketless, using electronic tickets;
• our policy is not to overbook flights;
• fares are based on one-way travel;
• no Saturday night stay is required; and
• change fees are only $30 per passenger ($25 if done through our website) compared with the
$50 to $100 usually charged by other major U.S. airlines.
Our customer commitment is also demonstrated by our reliable operational performance. For the
year ended December 31, 2006, based on our data compared to the other major U.S. airlines:
• because we have a policy of not overbooking our flights, we had virtually no incidences of
passenger denied boarding and, therefore, led the industry in this DOT metric;
• our completion factor of 99.6%was the highest as compared to other major U.S. airlines,
which had an average completion factor of 98.3%, according to the DOT. We are committed
to operating flights whenever possible and not canceling; however, our commitment to
customer service, along with operating at three of the most congested and delay-prone
airports in the U.S. (Newark, LaGuardia and JFK), has affected our on-time performance,
which at 72.9%was lower than all but one major U.S. airline;
• our incidence of delayed, mishandled or lost bags of 4.09 per 1,000 customers was the lowest
as compared to other major U.S. airlines, which had an average of 6.86 delayed, mishandled
or lost bags per 1,000 customers, according to the DOT; and
• our rate of customer complaints to the DOT per 100,000 passengers of 0.40 was the third
lowest as compared to the other major U.S. airlines, which had an average of 0.88 complaints,
according to the DOT.
Safety and Security
We are dedicated to ensuring the safety and security of our customers and employees. We have
taken numerous measures, voluntarily and as required by regulatory authorities, to increase both the
safety and security of our operations.
Our ongoing focus on safety relies on hiring the best people, training them to applicable
standards, and providing them with the most advanced tools and equipment. Safety in the workplace
targets five areas of our operation: flight operations, maintenance, inflight, dispatch and customer
service. We continue to expand our participation in voluntary programs in partnership with the FAA,
including Aviation Safety Action Programs and Flight Operational Quality Assurance data gathering.
These voluntary programs are the result of FAA-sponsored initiatives to raise safety performance
through awareness of safety trends in the workplace. We also equip our entire Airbus A320 fleet with
the Emergency Vision Assurance system, or EVAS, which provides our flight crews with the ability to
see critical flight instruments should the cockpit fill with smoke. Further, we emphasize both
occupational and environmental safety across our network. Since introducing enhanced physical
abilities testing for those work groups at greatest risk of ergonomic injuries, we have seen significant
year-over-year decreases in lost-work injuries. Additionally, JetBlue has joined with other airlines and
the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in voluntary partnerships that are focused on
reducing ergonomics injuries and improving airport ramp safety.
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