Bestest Apology Letter

Dear JetBlue Customers,

We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.

Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue's seven year history. Following the severe winter ice storm in the Northeast, we subjected our customers to unacceptable delays, flight cancellations, lost baggage, and other major inconveniences. The storm disrupted the movement of aircraft, and, more importantly, disrupted the movement of JetBlue's pilot and inflight crewmembers who were depending on those planes to get them to the airports where they were scheduled to serve you. With the busy President's Day weekend upon us, rebooking opportunities were scarce and hold times at 1-800-JETBLUE were unacceptably long or not even available, further hindering our recovery efforts.

Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.

We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are taking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in us. We have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and more timely information to you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures for handling operational difficulties in the future. We are confident, as a result of these actions, that JetBlue will emerge as a more reliable and even more customer responsive airline than ever before.

Most importantly, we have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Rights—our official commitment to you of how we will handle operational interruptions going forward—including details of compensation. I have a video message to share with you about this industry leading action.

You deserved better—a lot better—from us last week. Nothing is more important than regaining your trust and all of us here hope you will give us the opportunity to welcome you onboard again soon and provide you the positive JetBlue Experience you have come to expect from us.

Got this via email today. Impressed (especially coming from a budget carrier). Best apology letter that I have read in the longest time. It acknowledged the dire situation, the irritable plight it put its customers through and vowed to improve its operations. Sounds straight out from a marketing communications textbook.

Okay, I may be biased since I wasn't one of those angry customers (else I would be tearing my hair out now amid colourful expletives). JetBlue does command excellent customer service based on my encounter with them when I was in the US 2 years ago.

You see, this blur queen got the internal flight dates mixed up and well, inadvertently missed the flight. Only to realise it at the end of the day. So we called the hotline and viola! Jetblue was so kind as to put us on the waitlist the next day with no extra charge. Its a very generous leeway considering that its the customer's fault for screwing things up. And yes, we made for the flight ... free!

I'm a true blue JetBlue advocate. Fly them if you happen to be in the US.