Airlines seem to be paying scant attention to the economic downturn these days, with fare wars breaking out all over the place. Since Virgin America announced plans to start operating flights from the west coast to Boston American Airlines has been playing a lot of defense. Frequencies have been increased and bonus miles showered on customers.
Things got a bit more interesting today with an announcement from jetBlue that they, too, are entering the bonus fray. The carrier is offering a “buy 2, get 1 free” deal for their TrueBlue members until May 31st. The reward certificate will be issued after June 15th and is only valid until December 15th, so not particularly great there. Also, jetBlue is limiting the deal to a single bonus reward per customer, unlike the AA deal that is wide open for earning as many miles as one can handle flying. The single advantage that jetBlue seems to have is that they are offering to the deal for many more cities than AA is: Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, Denver and Las Vegas are all part of the promo. You have to register here if you plan to take advantage of this deal.
I continue to be amazed by the ability of jetBlue to take a reasonable promo opportunity and completely tweak it to squash the value that it could potentially have. I get that they aren’t out to give away the farm, but I also have to think that eventually their customers are going to wise up to the limitations of the TrueBlue program and realize that it really isn’t very good.
Never miss another post: Sign up for email alerts and get only the content you want direct to your inbox.
