Blue's News - Nov 20

What's new with JetBlue

• LifeHacker has a great post on surviving flying for the holidays. From the TSA to the arrival gate, they've got you covered and the comments add in some useful color as well.

• BlueTales offers a look behind the scenes at their Veterans Career Expo in Long Island. It's this Thursday, November 21st from 12-4PM. You can sign up for it at EventBrite for free.
• "Our 2nd annual Veterans' Career Expo is geared toward veterans and their spouses interested in getting a better idea of whatcareer opportunities are available at JetBlue. Representatives from several JetBlue departments (including Finance, Inflight, JetBlue University, Marketing, Operations and many more) will be available to answer questions about their team/function. You will also have the opportunity to speak with veterans who currently work for JetBlue.This session is not specific to any role in particular. For those interested specifically in pilot career information, please register only for the pilot session at: https://pilotvets.eventbrite.com"

• Another post from LifeHacker on bringing an emergency travel pack with you - for the times when life's discomforts start to make travel a horrible experience. Bringing an extra charger, empty water bottle, and magazines are just a few of the items on their list to keep you and those around you happy.

• Until 12/31/13, Jet Blue is offering up to 50% bonus points for all gifted or purchased denominations. The bonus levels are:


• Buy between 5,000 - 9,500 get 20% bonus points
• Buy between 10,000 - 19,500 to get 30% bonus points 
• Buy between 20,000 - 29,500 to get 40% bonus points
• Buy 30,000 to get 50% bonus points

JetBlue Mobile App

For Android and iOS, Jet Blue's Mobile Offerings

Like any hip company these days, JetBlue has a mobile app to pair with their offerings. Unlike many other airline apps *cough* like Delta, this app works well. JetBlue has taken advantage of great, simple design to make an interface that is uniquely its own and uniform across the iOS/Android platforms - something that many apps fail at.

The mobile app allows you to login using your True-blue account to access everything from your rewards information to the weather to the in flight menu. It includes the typical boarding pass and flight information, but also takes strides to include some fun extras and a few features that surprisingly don't exist on every airline's app. Some of the highlights include:

A home screen which shows your upcoming flight, a menu with quick access to flight statuses, settings, a JetBlue customer service line, bag checking, weather, and "fun stuff" including wallpapers and postcards.

Drilling down into the menu, the flight status option gives a clear detail of all key information points for your selected flight. You can opt to receive notifications from the app when there are updates, such as a delay.

The boarding pass is a great option to use if you forgot to print one out or simply prefer to not have to deal with it. I find taking a screenshot of this portion of the app works best when it comes to going through security, on the off chance my phone can't find a signal or decides to be very slow right as I come up to a ticket checker. Most major airports (and many non-major) support scanning phones now for boarding passes. It's one less thing to worry about when traveling and is also great for the environment. 

In the "fun stuff" category, along with wallpapers, comes the option to send a postcard from the app. Tell your friends and family about how great of a time you're having at your destination! This extra feature in the app shows once again how JetBlue 'gets it' when it comes to social media and sharing. Give people a way to express and share their thoughts and feelings and they will happily do so!

Finally, one of the other unique features of the app is a timetable. While it's not hard to find a timetable on any one of dozens of monitors at any given airport, standing in a crowd during high traffic hours can be a pain. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to simply pull the latest flight timetable up on my phone from where I'm sitting - and JetBlue has provided a way to do so.

There are plenty more great parts of the app (terminal maps, destination city guides, and more), but these are some of the best executed and novel features that truly add value to JetBlue's app when compared to its competitors. Above all, the app just plain works and at the end of the day when it comes to a boarding pass or checking a flight status, that is the most important part of an app like this. Kudos to you, JetBlue, for making an app that's easy to love!

Blue's News - Nov 13

What's new with JetBlue

• In line with the recent announcement of family points pooling, BlueTales posted some tips courtesy of the Huffington Post on how to ensure your family's flights are safe, fun, and well planned.

• Remember Blue's Bravest recent debut over the skylines of Manhattan? The plane is now in service for flights and the reception at the hangar after its maiden flight captures some of the magic from that first day:

• A wedding at T5? Sounds crazy, but it's true! The winners of JetBlue's "Something Blue" contest got married at T5 and then headed to Hawaii for their honeymoon courtesy of JetBlue and Hawaiian Airlines. Check out the romance below:

SoFly

SoFly: JetBlue's Social Media World

It's no surprise that JetBlue has a strong social media presence, part of its target demographic is younger customers. JetBlue has been able to muster a really great tie-in between the customer experience and the company culture through the SoFly program. SoFly acts as a place where JetBlue can share random information, from their service awards to their plane tail designs to interesting statistics. It's also made of customers' social media contributions from destinations, airports, and experiences. These come in the form of tips, Instragrams, and recommendations for food, amenities, and hotels. 

This presents an unprecedented opportunity for customers to truly interact and have an ongoing conversation with an airline. Choice submissions that use such hashtags as #sofly or #jetblue get placed on the SoFly page where they can be seen by everyone. It's a great opportunity to increase your social media account's traffic and just plain cool. It's dynamic, responsive, and customer driven. These are then available to share again on Facebook, re-tweet on Twitter, etc.

An example of an Instragram picture added to SoFly.

At its core, SoFly is an aggregation of all JetBlue social media onto the main website. It's not a revolutionary idea, but goes a long way to truly tie together the experience of planning, traveling, and booking budget flights with JetBlue. No other airline has deployed as sleek, functional, and enjoyable social media experience in this way. SoFly allows customers to be proud of JetBlue and for JetBlue to show off how great of a company they are as well. It'll be interesting to see how this evolves over time and if any other cheap airlines, let alone the big players, adopt a similar program in the future. This is a great first step in improving the chasm that has developed over the year between an airline and its customers having a natural and satisfying dialogue.