JetBlue Charting Corporate Course

JetBlue is exploring issuing refundable tickets, offering preferred seating for high-yielding and last-minute bookers as well as taking a more flexible stance in corporate discounting, JetBlue CEO David Neeleman said today.

"We're in the process of rolling out a program, such that if you call the day before a flight and book a $399 ticket for transcon, I want that person sitting in the front of the airplane in an aisle seat," Neeleman told an audience of corporate travel buyers during an Association of Corporate Travel Executives lunch in New York. Neeleman noted that the carrier has upgraded its seats, leaving about 45 percent with a pitch of 36 inch or more, particularly in the front of the plane. This has made some seats more desirable than others. "We've had this egalitarian approach in terms of picking what seat you like," Neeleman said, noting that JetBlue seating assignments come on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Neeleman said the carrier also is testing "with a couple of corporations" refundable fares. "If you want to pay us more money, we'll give you something that's refundable and changeable," Neeleman said. According to the carrier's Contract of Carriage, "fares are nonrefundable" and "a passenger is not entitled to a refund when the passenger cancels, changes or fails to use his or her reservation." Neeleman did not specify any timetable for making refundable fares more widespread. "We're testing it with a couple of corporations and it's amazing how much more people will pay" for refundable fares, Neeleman said.

Like many low-cost carriers, JetBlue has earned the reputation among corporate travel managers as offering non-negotiable fares. Neeleman, however, noted that this is not a hard and fast rule at JetBlue. "I've never been a rule guy that much," he said. "To the extent that someone walked in and said, 'I got a 100 people a day going here. If you give them this fare, I'll give you them all.' I'll say, 'All right, let's take a look at it.' I think we should be flexible in everything we do."