Happy Jetting - If Only We Could Have Jetted at The Insider

Pictures: Happy Jetting - If Only We Could Have Jetted

On a hot summer’s night, two gals packed their bags in preparation for a relaxing six hour trip aboard Jet Blue Flight 647. We looked forward to endless snacks, personal tv, XM radio and endless leg room. What we didn’t anticipate was spending 5.5 hours on the tarmac, running out of jet fuel, filling the waste tanks, and the eventual cancellation of our flight after the crew had reached their maximum number of hours. Somehow our co-worker, booked on a flight departing two hours later, managed to make it to San Francisco as we were inexplicably stranded on the tarmac.

At first the experience didn’t rattle us, as we watched both X-Men & X-Men 2 and giggled various topics. Jet Blue’s new Happy Jetting slogan seems even more absurd since were never able to Jet. We would have been much happier had the Jetting actually occurred. Time after time the pilot spoke to us over the loudspeaker, spouting various excuses he was handed down from the tower. First we were going to have to make a refueling stop in Salt Lake City because we had sat on the tarmac too long and had used too much fuel to make it to our destination. After another hour and a half passed, the captain informed us that we had run out of fuel and had filled the waste tanks, resulting in our flight returning to the gate for refueling and de-wasting. Yet another hour and a half passed (still waiting to return to the gate, mind you) when they informed us that the flight crew was over their maximum number of hours and would be unable to complete the flight. Didn’t you have the slightest idea that would happen two hours ago before our six hour flight even got off the ground?

Needless to say, sometime around hour three of the 5.5 hour experience a stroke of genius hit: Jet Blue has a Twitter. I could Twitter @JetBlue and maybe they’d respond. Maybe we’d get snack boxes! Lo and behold, not only did Twitter respond, but I received seven direct messages from the man behind JetBlue’s experiment in social media. To view the entirety of our Twitter conversations, plus a documentary video straight from the cabin, follow the jump.

Source: Style IT