Not Cleared for Take Off
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Flip Side Barbara Ehrenreich Not Cleared for Take Off The lucky JetBlue passengers were the ones whose flights were canceled in February. They were fortunate enough to remain stranded in...
...JetBlue’s CEO David Neeleman has nine of them...
...But JetBlue’s outbreak of passenger abuse reflects larger problems in corporate America...
...As for the unlucky ones, hundreds of them were trapped for as many as ten hours in planes on the tarmac, with overflowing toilets, dwindling supplies of drinking water, and no food when the pretzels ran out...
...JetBlue’s approach certainly succeeded in clearing some boarding areas of noisy, disgruntled passengers, but a stun gun might have been more humane...
...Imagine: No payroll except for the top executives, no benefits to provide, and, of course, no unions...
...Barbara Ehrenreich is a columnist for The Progressive...
...The other widespread problem is a simple shortage of employees...
...And how many times can you read Curious George out loud anyway...
...Youth is part of JetBlue’s branding, even if it means having no one around who’s ever seen snow...
...Since the late ’80s, corporate America has pursued the beautiful dream of an employee-free company...
...Her latest book, “Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy,” has just been published...
...They were fortunate enough to remain stranded in well-heated airports with restrooms and food courts...
...Neeleman has admitted to being “humiliated and mortified” by his company’s post-storm meltdown (one might wish that his status included “fired...
...Which might be OK if bad weather hadn’t become so routine that it’s crowding out all other news on CNN...
...He should rethink that, since the major reason JetBlue couldn’t get back off the ground after the Valentine’s Day storm was that it lacks the personnel to connect crews to their flights...
...According to CNN, parents on stranded planes were ripping up T-shirts to make diapers for their babies...
...Pilots and flight attendants remained stuck in their hotels while passengers slept on airport floors...
...In June 2006, Neeleman announced plans to reduce its number of full-time employees per plane from ninety-three to eighty...
...Let’s face it, JetBlue and the rest of you: Anything more than three hours on the ground isn’t an airline delay, it’s a hostage situation...
...Neeleman might also want to rethink the paltry passengers’ “bill of rights” JetBlue is offering as part of its effort to regain customer trust...
...So far there have been no reports of cannibalism aboard immobilized JetBlue flights, but, with the company’s post-ice storm PR campaign in full swing, who knows...
...Her website is www.barbaraehrenreich.com...
...I could do ten hours on the tarmac, provided I had a sufficient supply of Xanax and protein bars...
...Would he dare risk a family vacation in the Caribbean if any of them are in the challenging zerototen age range...
...What it’s missing is the crucial right to be freed from an airplane that isn’t going anywhere at all for three or four hours...
...Since 9/11, the airlines in particular have been shedding employees like unwanted ballast, with predictable results...
...As The New York Times reports, there’s been an industrywide “thinning of staff,” meaning that in bad weather, airlines often “do not have enough people...
...But with children...
...According to a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the industry’s major trade group, such a right would impose “inflexible standards on a carrier’s operations”—just as laws against kidnapping place a terrible burden on ransom-seekers...
...According to Aero News, this may have had something to do with the company’s decision, shortly after the storm, to push planes off to the tarmac rather than canceling flights, as the older airlines did...
...If I get stuck on the tarmac for three or four hours, I plan to use my cell phone to call Homeland Security...
...The budget airlines are especially skimpy when it comes to human employees...
...One is a premium on youth at the expense of experience...
Vol. 71 • April 2007 • No. 4
