Bad Press a Bummer for JetBlue

JetBlue is finally growing up. CEO David Neeleman and his team have lived a charmed existence during their eight years in business, and the press has been generally positive and supportive, including this 2005 Q&A in Workforce Management.                                                           

That’s all well and good, but nothing lasts forever. Good press can come and go, and Neeleman is finding that it’s tough to turn things back to the good when the media gets fixated on the bad. He recently groused to Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, about the bad publicity JetBlue had gotten in the wake of the “Valentine’s Day debacle” when thousands of passengers were stranded for hours in planes on runways, or in airports, when a winter storm crippled JetBlue operations.

“I’m frustrated that JetBlue got all the [negative] publicity when all the other airlines got no [negative] publicity,” Neeleman told the newspaper. He went on to say that the airline would be better prepared in the future and that it would be “tough for one storm” to knock JetBlue out again.

It’s amusing when an executive like Neeleman, who has been the beneficiary of glowing and laudatory press coverage for most of his company’s brief existence, finally discovers that press coverage can cut both ways. Media tend to move in a pack, and the herd loved the concept of JetBlue with low prices, all-leather seats and in-flight satellite television at every seat. But, the press herd also saw the Valentine’s Day debacle for what it was: a massive structural failure in an airline that didn’t have enough experience or infrastructure to deal with the weather problems.

If other airlines didn’t get as roundly criticized for their storm-related difficulties, well, they also didn’t have such a great run of positive press. JetBlue was due to come back to earth at some point, at least in the media, and the Valentine’s Day debacle was a wake-up call to the press that although JetBlue was wonderful in many ways, it wasn’t immune from the realities of the U.S. airline industry.

Neeleman has done all the right things in the wake of the JetBlue weather fiasco—the aggressive public campaign to make sure the airline is better prepared for next time with more contingency plans is a good start—but he also needs to remember one thing: a business executive can’t fall in love with his press clippings. The best business leaders roll with the punches, stay humble and focused, and don’t get overly fixated on what the media is saying. They are gracious when the press is good and philosophical and good-natured when it is bad. If they are lucky, the good will more than outweigh the bad. Whatever negative has been written about JetBlue, it is far outweighed by the good. Dave Neeleman needs to remember that and pray that it will always be so.