Dream achieved: My Yahoo Travel profile of a JetBlue superfan is up

A few years ago, I took a Mediabistro class on travel writing, and while the instructor was fascinating and wonderful, I left discouraged. I don't have what it takes, I concluded, and pretty much set that dream aside, even though I do love traveling and do it a fair amount for work-related events, and sometimes for fun. Today I achieved that dream by having my first article run at Yahoo Travel, about a JetBlue superfan who's taken more than 100 flights since April 2013 on a Ph.D. grad student budget. Travel has changed my life, so it was an honor to profile someone for whom the same can be said. It's also an interesting look at how a brand, in this case JetBlue, can best interact with its customers to make them loyal and also have fun with their Tweeting! I hope you'll check it out, and I hope that I continue to get to write about one of my favorite topics! Here's a snippet:

How did the airline win him over? The Boston College PhD student’s JetBlue obsession started by accident. He’d booked a trip to Hawaii with another airline, which bungled his reservation so badly he canceled it and rebooked on JetBlue. Then he took to Twitter. “I first discovered how different JetBlue was when I tweeted them and another airline due to some poor service I experienced,” Brown told Yahoo Travel. “The response was telling. The other airline’s tweet read like a machine-generated form letter. JetBlue’s tweet was personal, and they let me know they were ‘#superexcited’ to have me fly with them.”

And this right here is proof of what he is talking about, in response to my Tweet about the article:

An iPhone app will now calculate how good your sex life is

My latest Medium post is called "I Don't Want or Need an App to Measure My Sex Life." If you like it, please click "recommend" at the bottom and spread the word. And I took my Hitachi Magic Wand for a sex drive:



This isn't really related, other than to say that while I don't want badges for having sex (you earn them using Spreadsheets), even on Hannukah, I do highly recommend the JetBlue badges program. If you already fly JetBlue, it's totally worth it. You get frequent flyer miles just for joining, and then more when you earn badges for travel, social media use and other things. I have a few trips coming up with JetBlue: Burlington, Vermont, Charleston, South Carolina and Albuquerque, New Mexico--I chose the latter in part because JetBlue had cheap flights, $133 each way. But really I'm such a booster for them because they make flying as easy as possible. They don't charge for the first checked bag, which I so appreciate; for other airlines, I'd rather pay more for my ticket price and not have to fork over an extra $25 each way for my luggage. I just overall have had good experiences with JetBlue, though I check prices and fly whichever airline is cheapest.

What I look for in an airline is what I look for from the people in my life

Yesterday, I spent about 6 hours in Buffalo, at the airport, waiting to find out when I would get to go home. My JetBlue flight from Phoenix was diverted due to fog at JFK, after it had been delayed about an hour. At first, we all trudged off the plane and waited, and I expected to get home that morning. Not at 6 as planned, but that morning. Each hour we were told to check back. Around 9:30 we were told we'd be boarding. Some people stood in line; I sat and charged my phone. Just when we thought we'd be boarding, an announcement was made that the crew had timed out, that gate was closing, and we could go to another gate to find out what was happening. They said something vague about giving us food vouchers and that we could take a bus. That was it. No notice, no warning that this crew time out was imminent, no information about next flights.

Most of us went to the gate we were sent to; some went to another gate nearby. Both gates were busy boarding two other flights to JFK and barely moved. I did see the two sisters (one was 10, I believe, the other probably younger) being boarded onto one of the flights. The woman with a baby was waiting with all the rest of us. We had to rely on random snippets of information gleaned from passengers who pushed to the front and returned with what we hoped was concrete details. @JetBlue on Twitter apologized but couldn't tell us anything more. We were told we could go to a third gate for information, but when I arrived I heard the woman staffing that gate tell us she was having a bad day, too, before leaving. She returned shortly only to call and ask what to do with us. I heard murmurings about a 5 p.m. flight. Then out of nowhere an announcement came that they'd found us a crew and we would be boarding. Eventually, we did, and landed around 1 p.m.

The thing that bothered me most wasn't the delay, although that wasn't fun. My KLM flight from Amsterdam to Dubai was cancelled due to the plane's mechanical issues, and we dealt with it. No one wants to fly on an unsafe plane or into fog. But the utter lack of information given to us was appalling and for that, I do blame JetBlue. They should have foreseen that the crew would time out when they did and tried to get another crew in sooner. They should have told us that was a possibility. They should have kept us informed and had staffers to help us when that crew timed out. They didn't.

Today I got an email from JetBlue about a fare sale. Go short, go medium or go long. Travel between November 20th and December 20th. "Fares not available on Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, or Priceline," according to their website. I'm tempted, because I love traveling, I love the thrill of escape and discovery. But what I look for in an airline is what I look for from anyone I deal with: good communication. Trust. Knowing they are working to the best of their abilities. Yesterday, JetBlue wasn't. I did get a $10 voucher. I did get home, to a city where the Airtrain and my subway are back up and running. The Buffalo airport did have wifi. But I remembered telling everyone who asked in Scottsdale that JetBlue is my favorite airline, that I try to fly them as often as possible, that I was looking forward to flying them home after I'd flown Delta on the way out. I hope JetBlue can restore my faith in them, because they have a lot to offer as an airline. But they didn't live up to the service I've come to expect yesterday, and that's because they didn't tell us what was going on. It was chaotic and unprofessional and confusing. I hate that in my relationships with people, and in my relationships with airlines or any other business.