hellas,
We have a company with a culture that stresses values (we seem to get tangled up with the integrity value though), a FEW sometimes overly eager crewmembers, a whole lot of internal communication, very little communication externally, and this bizarre interpretation of seniority that says because I got here three years before you did I'm an old timer. These combine SOMETIMES to create situations in which people can be made to feel excluded, or not clued in, or worried that they may have violated some code. Especially when you hear the familiar refrain, "how did they make it onto this property?" Like there was a failure in the machine that molds jetBlue employees.
People are told to speak up and yet when I ask someone whether they have spoken to the leadership about a specific problem they look at me like, "are you crazy? I'm not jumping into that." I know countless pilots, including myself, who've spoken up very patiently and very cogently only to encounter impatience, irritation, or worse, befuddlement. The befuddlement is where you begin to lose a little confidence. Eventually, if you haven't been assigned to yet another committee or another off-site, you get one line answers and you obtain a label for yourself.
We have an administration that bends over backwards to get out and talk and conduct meetings but a pilot group that has learned that even though they ask for "hard balls", it really just pisses them off. So we have a lot of one way communication. Don't get me wrong, there are many pilots involved in the running of this company (I think sometimes too many) but I've found that we also have a lot of group speak. Disagreement is viewed by SOME as subversion. I know this is very much the same at other airlines but I've never seen it to such a degree within the pilot group itself. Some would say this is a good thing and I would agree. It just needs to be balanced with reality. There is nothing wrong with being pro-company and being eager to help. There is something wrong with looking around and making mental lists and labels and I have big problems with just laying our careers at the feet of the bean counters with undying faith that we will be compensated. Shareholders and finance majors do not necessarily subscribe to values at the same level of faith that we do.
This part is comedy so please take it as such: we joke that when someone comes back from an off-site or gets a committee assignment that they've been subjected to the JetBlue mind trick. This is where the concepts of RASM over CASM become the gospel and where pilots are made to feel greedy about their desires for insurance or cost of living increases. JOKE !!
Friends at JetBlue: We can handle this kind of critisism. If we can't look at ourselves and be real then we are in for a rude awakening.
All of this said hellas,
I wouldn't choose to work anywhere else. Figure that one out.
Realistic
We have a company with a culture that stresses values (we seem to get tangled up with the integrity value though), a FEW sometimes overly eager crewmembers, a whole lot of internal communication, very little communication externally, and this bizarre interpretation of seniority that says because I got here three years before you did I'm an old timer. These combine SOMETIMES to create situations in which people can be made to feel excluded, or not clued in, or worried that they may have violated some code. Especially when you hear the familiar refrain, "how did they make it onto this property?" Like there was a failure in the machine that molds jetBlue employees.
People are told to speak up and yet when I ask someone whether they have spoken to the leadership about a specific problem they look at me like, "are you crazy? I'm not jumping into that." I know countless pilots, including myself, who've spoken up very patiently and very cogently only to encounter impatience, irritation, or worse, befuddlement. The befuddlement is where you begin to lose a little confidence. Eventually, if you haven't been assigned to yet another committee or another off-site, you get one line answers and you obtain a label for yourself.
We have an administration that bends over backwards to get out and talk and conduct meetings but a pilot group that has learned that even though they ask for "hard balls", it really just pisses them off. So we have a lot of one way communication. Don't get me wrong, there are many pilots involved in the running of this company (I think sometimes too many) but I've found that we also have a lot of group speak. Disagreement is viewed by SOME as subversion. I know this is very much the same at other airlines but I've never seen it to such a degree within the pilot group itself. Some would say this is a good thing and I would agree. It just needs to be balanced with reality. There is nothing wrong with being pro-company and being eager to help. There is something wrong with looking around and making mental lists and labels and I have big problems with just laying our careers at the feet of the bean counters with undying faith that we will be compensated. Shareholders and finance majors do not necessarily subscribe to values at the same level of faith that we do.
This part is comedy so please take it as such: we joke that when someone comes back from an off-site or gets a committee assignment that they've been subjected to the JetBlue mind trick. This is where the concepts of RASM over CASM become the gospel and where pilots are made to feel greedy about their desires for insurance or cost of living increases. JOKE !!
Friends at JetBlue: We can handle this kind of critisism. If we can't look at ourselves and be real then we are in for a rude awakening.
All of this said hellas,
I wouldn't choose to work anywhere else. Figure that one out.
Realistic
Last edited:
