Don’t fly off the handle in flight: JetBlue
JetBlue is trying to return to the friendly skies by unveiling videos on social etiquette.
Snoring, slouching sleepers and the challenges of climbing over fellow passengers on a trip to the restroom — those are among the myriad inflight etiquette issues faced by travelers on crowded planes, and are the first targeted by JetBlue in a series of overthetop videos posted on Facebook and Twitter to encourage passengers to think about their behavior.
“We wanted to say, ‘ We’ve all been there. We get it, and let’s talk about it,’ ” Lisa Borromeo, JetBlue director of brand management and advertising, said about the clips for #FlightEtiquette. “It’s a universal truth of flying.”
The videos follow a summer in which several incidents of air rage occurred on crowded US aircraft, including three in a span of nine days that led to flight diversions.
One, on a United Airlines plane, involved a passenger spat that escalated into water tossing and transformed the Knee Defender seat back lodging gadget into a household name.
The JetBlue videos aren’t intended to tell customers how to behave, Borromeo said in an interview. The exaggerated examples “are meant to be fun” and to generate dialog with passengers about their experiences, she said.
JetBlue, based in New York, on Dec. 22 released the first video, entitled “How Not to Take a Nap.” It portrays a sleeping, snoring man leaning onto the shoulder and then the lap of a passenger in the seat next to him, and eventually lying across the entire row.
The second, released on Jan. 7, shows a passenger in a window seat consuming several beverages and then facing the dilemma of getting past sleeping travelers in the middle and aisle seats of her row.
In “How Not to Make an Exit,” the fidgeting woman tries various ways to wake the sleepers, then attempts to climb over and under them.