JetBlue's St. George Chats About Success of All You Can Jet
I have a confession to make - I was one of the people who was green with envy when I heard about JetBlue's All You Can Jet pass. And since i couldn't commit to that trip, I followed the activities of those who could. You can see my posts here and here.
JetBlue's Marty St. George Photo by Benet Wilson
Today's issue (subscribers only) of Aviation Daily includes my interview with Marty St. George, JetBlue's senior VP-marketing and commercial on the carrier's thoughts about the pass program, which ended Oct. 8. He said the effort was a “home run out of the park.”
September is a month where load factors go down significantly from August, said St. George. “So we knew we had the seats for AYCJ,” he said. “The idea for AYCJ had been floating around for a few years and we took another look at it this summer and we finally found a way to make it work, operationally.”
The most important aspect of AYCJ was the interaction of our front line crew members with the Jetters, said St. George. "One thing that was fun about the program was that there was very little involvement from headquarters to make it successful," he saod. "As the start date approached, we gave crewmembers AYCJ buttons, tshirts bag tags to pass out."
It was interesting that as jetters started to fly and blog and tweet about it, cities started competing on what they could do for them, said St. George. "And these were fun customers to be with. They were excited to be on JetBlue and always identified themselves," he said. "I took a flight to Chicago on the second week of September and found there were dozens of jetters on it. And if you looked around, you could see them. They looked like people who love to sit in the front row of a roller coaster."
Jennifer Milano created the 599Club and held a series of meet-ups for jetters, said St. George. "The first meeting was at a bar in Chelsea (New York). There was no official JetBlue involvement, but we showed up and brought some swag," he said. "Fifty people were there and we paid for it in the end because we were so excited." Milano had never flown B6 before she got the pass, he added.
What was most impressive for JetBlue was the amazing mix of people who bought the passes, said St. George. “We thought it would all be 20- to 30-somethings, but we had business people, commuters and even older affluent couples,” he observed. There are a few things here and there that could be tweaked, said St. George. “But overall, we’re very happy with the way things worked out and we’re not going to change a thing,” he said.
