Since mid-February, JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU) has been in a state of meltdown, according to Julie Johnsson of The Chicago Tribune. JetBlue had to cancel over 1,000 flights and it took days to recover from that mess. Once the airline's home base at JFK Airport in New York City closed due to an ice storm, JetBlue had neither the planes nor the personnel to construct a work-around solution. JetBlue then compounded the problem by not canceling additional flights soon enough or by leaving airplanes stranded on taxiways for hours before eventually canceling the flights. Such widespread negative publicity sounds like a recipe for corporate disaster. To counteract the negative publicity, JetBlue CEO David Neeleman issued an apology to the traveling public and released JetBlue's new Customer Bill of Rights. It is difficult to tell who is more gullible, CEO Neeleman who thinks that a marketing ploy will undo horrendous negative publicity caused by systematic corporate malfunctioning or investors who have bid the stock up in recent days. JetBlue stock closed at $11.82 on Tuesday, 6 March, up 2%.

JetBlue's Customer Bill of Rights is merely boilerplate blather that presents passengers' legal rights as though JetBlue were doing them a favor. If the flight is delayed by 1-2 hours, the customer gets a voucher for $25. That may be enough to buy lunch at the airport. For delays 2-4 hours, the voucher increases to $50. But please bear in mind that these delays must be due to a "controllable irregularity," such term being nowhere spelled out in the Bill of Rights. If the plane has landed but cannot get to a gate to unload after 3 hours, the customer gets a free round trip ticket on the same airline that couldn't get the job done in the first place.

CEO Neeleman is very proud of the guarantee that if a JetBlue flight has been stranded on the taxiway for more than 5 hours, JetBlue promises to return to the terminal where customers can deplane and begin the process all over again. In such case, passengers may want to keep the number for Amtrak handy.