JetBlue Cancelations More than Storm

The New York Times is noting more cancellations from JetBlue and more angry customers. In a quote:

On Friday afternoon, JetBlue’s chief executive, David G. Neeleman, acknowledged that he should have canceled more JetBlue flights on Wednesday to avoid stranding for more than six hours hundreds of passengers on nine planes that could not get to the gates at J.F.K. In an interview, Mr. Neeleman said of the spillover of delays to Friday: “Day three: unforgivable.”

Forget the public breast beating - and forget the storm. All airlines deal with problems. But when they cascade like this, no matter what the industry, it's an indication of deep operational problems. There is no way the company had an adequate plan for this degree of bad weather ... and, folks, if you've spent any time in the North during winter, you know things like this happen. Here's another example:

Ms. Dervin, the JetBlue spokeswoman, said that the airline called all of its pilots and flight attendants on Friday afternoon to determine where they were and how many hours of flight time they had left under government work rules, and simultaneously was patching together a new full schedule for the weekend.

You mean they don't track this normally? Jet Blue management management doesn't know where the pilots and attendants last were? Doesn't have schedules and logged hours on a computer system? Give me a break - a well-run small business would have this sort of information, and so must a large business that is subject to government regulations.

However, part of the blame for the surprise rests on the media and analysts covering this company and sector. There is too much interest in the new golden wonder, and people start annointing heads quickly, only to turn and pretend they saw it all along in situations like things going South up North.