Berlin is a city where families will feel welcome.
27.07.2023 - 18:23 / smartertravel.com / Airlines
JetBlue Airways burst onto the U.S. domestic airline scene 15 years ago with bigger and more comfortable seats, livable 34-inch seat pitches (pitch is the distance between seats), free inflight entertainment and TV in every seat, and generous checked baggage policies — and when it got a heap of slots at the JFK airport, many hardcore travelers flocked to the airline.
Founded by a former Southwest executive, it was a sort of shining moon to Southwest’s shining sun at a time when airlines were disappointing and stranding passengers almost routinely. Newspaper articles and Internet columns lauded the airline, with many pundits hoping against hope that the airline would lead the industry to fulfill JetBlue’s tagline to “bring humanity back to air travel.”
The airline was rewarded for differentiating itself, as it actually posted a profit in the early 2000s when the rest of the airline industry was floundering. To many passengers and industry watchers, it seemed like the good guys were going to win.
Which is why it has come as such a bruising disappointment to so many that JetBlue is now abandoning many, if not all, of the practices that made it a darling of many serious travelers for the past decade and a half.
Joe Brancatelli extracts the sordid details in an article tellingly titled JetBlue defects to the dark side. Gone will be the free checked bags for everyone, Airbus 320s will be reconfigured to stuff 15 more chairs inside, and the comfortable leather seats will be replaced by harder and less forgiving “slimline” seats. Additional fees for items passengers now enjoy as part of their fare on JetBlue (but almost nowhere else) seem likely.
Things aren’t getting better elsewhere. In fact, Delta is introducing a new class of service it’s calling “Basic Economy,” but it’s more like “Sub-Economy” if you ask me. The new class will not allow flight changes, seat upgrades, refunds of any kind or a way to redeem unused tickets. Tired of dealing with passenger rights and comfort, Delta is going to make it explicit in its fare structure: its lowest fares buy you neither rights nor comfort.
Related:10 Ways to Survive a Long-Haul FlightDomestic U.S. airlines are not alone in this race to the bottom. Once highly regarded Lufthansa has been shifting many of its operations to its low-cost subsidiary Germanwings, which inspired infamous Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary to target the German market as a good place to stake out new business. He recently dismissed Lufthansa and Germanwings as a threat to his own airline, saying, “Some engineers and doctors get together in Frankfurt and decide around a green table that they’ll found a low-cost airline; that’s just not enough.” Put another way, O’Leary’s argument is basically
Berlin is a city where families will feel welcome.
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