Oh, those $29 fares. So excited are customers of JetBlue that they appear to be causing a problems for the low cost airline.

JetBlue spokesman Morgan Johnston says user traffic related to a fare sale today led to the airline’s website experiencing “intermittent outages” for about 30 to 45 minutes this morning.

@JetBlue earlier had tweeted: “We’re experiencing technical difficulties on our homepage. To book, please go to:http://book.jetblue.com/B6/webqtrip.html”

Johnston says the website issues have since been resolved.

Today’s surge of website traffic follows last week’s burst when JetBlue sold out an offering of All You Can Jet flight passes in 60 hours.

Johnston declined to reveal how many flight passes JetBlue sold last week, but indicated that consumers bought 15% more of the airline’s flight passes than they did when the passes were offered in 2009.

Easyjet continues its march to becoming a full service carrier and seems to be following the JetBlue model for LCC-to-hybrid-to-full service.

At the present time the only things missing from its arsenal are a frequent flyer program, unique GDS content and interlining. Everything else is already there.

A few weeks ago, Easyjet told to the trade via a note through the Galileo system that it would offer a new Flexible Fares Product bundle.

This bundle will include speedy boarding and one checked bag. Not too dissimilar to that other ex-low cost champion, Southwest Airlines.

Indeed Southwest has two business level fares and the top of the line is its Business Select product, which is what many business users are already adopting and has given Southwest a kick in yield.

According to the note from Galileo the full announcement has yet to be made, although the system will be available from 7 September 2010.

And Galileo appears to be the only GDS where such enchancements are being touted at the moment. However, we can expect that they will continue to roll this out to other channels.

There will be endless social media and crisis communications case studies written about JetBlue’s response to flight attendant Steven Slater’s unauthorized slide, amusement-park style, down a jet’s emergency chute.

But, one thing is clear so far: While some companies choose to ignore thorny issues in social media when the news is especially dire or legal investigations hamper communications, JetBlue is answering virtually every tweet about the issue — even if it is to say that it can’t comment about ongoing investigations.

The mantra seems to be: Let no tweet go unanswered.

OK, JetBlue didn’t exactly react very speedily to the issue, and as Advertising Age pointed out Aug. 10, initially there had been no response to the Slater tempest on JetBlue’s Facebook page.

JetBlue certainly was feeling some social media heat immediately after the incident, although I don’t think there was much damage to the JetBlue brand.

Although Slater has become a hero to many, the flight attendant storm is not United Breaks Guitars.

JetBlue wrote its first blog post about the issue Aug. 11, two days after the Monday incident, and posted links to it on Facebook and Twitter.

Here’s the entire post, under the headline, Sometimes the weird news is about us…

“It wouldn’t be fair for us to point out absurdities in other corners of the industry without acknowledging when it’s about us. Well, this week’s news certainly falls into that category. Perhaps you heard a little story about one of our flight attendants? While we can’t discuss the details of what is an ongoing investigation, plenty of others have already formed opinions on the matter. Like, the entire Internet. (The reason we’re not commenting is that we respect the privacy of the individual. People can speak on their own behalf; we won’t do it for them.)

“While this episode may feed your inner Office Space, we just want to take this space to recognize our 2,300 fantastic, awesome and professional Inflight Crewmembers for delivering the JetBlue Experience you’ve come to expect of us.

“You can’t make this shtick up.”

Notice that JetBlue’s link to “a little story” refers to this CNN video, which makes light of the whole incident:

As of this writing, the blog post had 178 comments, many of which were supportive of Slater getting rehired, which is a very remote possibility.

And, although JetBlue hasn’t exactly been chatty about the Slater incident on its Twitter account, it has been engaging with followers about the events.

@kathybabb, a self-confessed social-media junkie from San Antonio, Texas, tweeted on Aug. 11: “Looks like Jet Blue’s legal dept is stifling social media responses. And getting snippy. Not good PR or SM. http://ow.ly/2oqkv #jetblue.”

@JetBlue responded: “@kathybabb Not entirely. http://bit.ly/aAvnJQ”

The link is to the JetBlue blog post.

@johnleesandiego tweeted Aug 12: “Why wasn’t the @JetBlue passenger who assaulted the flight attendant arrested?”

And, @JetBlue replied: “@johnleesandiego investigations are ongoing.”

@BrookebCNN, the twitter handle of CNN correspondent Brooke Baldwin, tweeted Aug. 12: “Hey Jet Blue — am hearing that you are giving $100 vouchers to the passengers on Monday’s Flight 1052. True?”

And, JetBlue tweeted back: “@BrookebCNN it’s not uncommon to give vouchers to customers that have an experience outside the norm – including things as simple as no TV!”

@JetBlue, with its nearly 1.6 million followers, has been renowned for blazing the trail in social media.

While other travel companies, including Continental Airlines, have at times gone silent on Twitter in the face of adverse news, JetBlue, at least, is conversing with its customers.

The JetBlue-Sabre romance was in full bloom for all to see yesterday.

In JetBlue’s second quarter earnings call, President and CEO David Barger credited Sabre, which began hosting the airline’s reservation system early this year, for enabling the airline to introduce 11 price points based on customer demand to its Even More Legroom product. Previously there were fewer price points and they were based on route length rather than customer demand.

Barger said the enhancements to Even More Legroom should generate $10 million in incremental revenue in the second half of 2010.

And, CFO Ed Barnes announced that beginning Sept. 1 JetBlue will introduce pre-boarding to Even More Legroom customers, a move designed to render the “program even more attactive to business customers.”

JetBlue also revealed it will establish an agreement with its sixth interline partner, El Al.

JetBlue implemented an interline agreement with American Airlines this week, and earlier during the second quarter established an interline pact with South African Airways.

“The Sabre platform is allowing us to better scale our business including more seamless integration with airline partners and better connectivity to global distribution systems,” Barger said. “While we began to realize some benefits of this more robust system [SabreSonic] back in February, we continue to see even more revenue growth as we add functionality to the Sabre platform.”

Barger also said Sabre enabled the airline to tap into “higher yielding business traffic through the GDS channels and enhanced pricing capabilities.”

The Sabre platform also aided the airline in adding several classes to the airline’s fare structure, a boost to JetBlue pricing and revenue management capabilities, he said.

JetBlue says it incurred $2 million in Sabre-related one-time expenses during the second quarter.

Despite all the plaudits for Sabre, the airline has experienced some hiccups in the transition to the new reservations system.

Barnes said JetBlue had lower change-fee revenue in the second quarter because it has waived certain change fees for passengers in connection with the SabreSonic implementation.

Soon you’ll be able to book American Airlines flights on JetBlue.com and JetBlue flights on AA.com.

The two airlines say they are working on these capabilities as they get ready on July 20 to begin implementing a previously announced interline agreement.

Under the collaboration, passengers will be able to connect between 14 of American’s international destinations departing from JFK in New York and Boston’s Logan Airport  and 18 of JetBlue’s domestic markets.

For example, travelers will be able to book New Orleans-New York-Rome interline service.

Passengers will be able to book these connecting services through most major online travel agency websites in North America, American Airlines ticket counters and phone lines, and through traditional travel agencies, the airlines say.

The respective carriers’ websites can’t handle the service for now, but they are working on providing the capability, the airlines say.

In addition, the two carriers announced that they intend to introduce a frequent flyer relationship later this year.

Members of AAdvantage and TrueBlue would be able to earn miles or points in the respective programs when they fly on the carriers’ interline routes.

The news is buried at the bottom of a Reuters story: A JetBlue spokesman says the airline will continue its policy which allows passengers to check their first bag for free.

That tidbit emerged as five airlines, including JetBlue, pledged to New York Senator Charles Schumer that they won’t match Spirit Airlines new policy to charge consumers up to $45 for carry-on bags. The five airlines are JetBlue, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and US Airways.

JetBlue spokesman Mateo Lleras says the airline has never charged for a checked bag or carry-on items and has “no plans to do so at this point.”

With JetBlue and Southwest Airlines among the lone holdouts in not charging a fee for the first checked bag, there had been a lot of speculation that JetBlue would join the crowd and begin charging for a first checked bag.

After all, JetBlue had transitioned early this year to the SabreSonic reservations system, a move that would help the airline implement new ancillary services and establish new codeshares.

Another thing that helped feed the speculation is that, unlike Southwest, JetBlue has not been aggressive about promoting its free, first-checked bag policy.

However, a link from the JetBlue homepage now trumpets its First Bag Free policy. Might a JetBlue commercial — perhaps along the lines of Southwest’s ad — be on the agenda?

JetBlue indeed may have some new ancillary services — i.e. unbundled services with a fee attached — in the works because a Sabre spokeswoman says a carrier-direct settlement mechanism will be in place for JetBlue “in the coming weeks.”

Sabre previously implemented carrier-direct settlement systems with Midwest, United and WestJet when they began offering optional services on their websites.

Meanwhile, Schumer appears to be succeeding with his campaign to head off any trend toward carry-on bag fees among major airlines. He says he will keep up his efforts and solicit promises from additional airlines not to charge for carry-ons.

Failing that, Schumer says he would propose legislation that would declare carry-on bags essential items for travel and thereby prohibit the fees.

So far, Spirit has not backed down on its pending carry-on fees.

Carry-on bag fees or not, charges for optional services, including meals, on airlines have become the norm.

However, there is no word yet whether any airlines on Schumer’s speed-dial have pledged to begin offering the senator’s favorite sandwich, known as the Schumwich.

What would the GDS code be for a Schumwich with extra pickles?

American Airlines today announced a commercial agreement with JetBlue, which will include interlining in markets where the two airlines don’t compete.

American describes some of the possible interlining scenarios.

“The partnership will focus on routes into and out of JFK and Boston Logan International Airport that extend and complement each others’ networks,” American states.

“For example, it would provide seamless service for customers who wish to fly nonstop from Nantucket to JFK on JetBlue and from there to London on American. Likewise, customers can board American from Paris to JFK and connect to a nonstop flight on JetBlue to Burlington, Vt. JetBlue customers will be able to effortlessly connect on flights to 12 of American’s international destinations from JFK and Boston including Barcelona, Spain; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Tokyo, Japan.

“On domestic routes where the carriers don’t currently compete, American customers can book convenient, nonstop JetBlue flights from JFK and Boston to 18 domestic markets, including Portland, Maine; Nantucket, Mass.; and Burlington, Vt.”

The American-JetBlue agreement also calls for a slot-swap at three airports.

JetBlue would transfer 12 slot pairs at JFK to American and, in exchange, American would hand over eight slot pairs at Reagan National Airport and one at White Plains, N.Y., to JetBlue.

American says some aspects of the new JetBlue agreement are subject to oversight by regulatory authorities.

When JetBlue transitioned to the SabreSonic reservations system a couple of months ago, the airline stated that one of the benefits would be its enhanced ability to interline and partner with other airlines.

In the last round of GDS negotiations in 2007, airlines such as American Airlines and Delta Airlines stridently warned that they would pull out of major GDSs if the carriers didn’t get their way.

In 2010, American is pledging to go outside of the GDSs again, this time through Farelogix, and JetBlue, in more thoughtful tones absent the rhetoric, is pushing the message that the airline-GDS business model is broken and must change, leading up to negotiations next year.

Noreen Courtney-Wilds, JetBlue’s vice president, sales, says the industry took “baby steps” in the last round of negotiations.

After those talks, the airlines reduced the booking fees they had to pay GDSs, and the GDSs made themselves whole to a large extent by greatly reducing the incentives they pay to travel agencies.

“We all kind of know the financial model needs to change,” Courtney-Wilds said in a panel discussion, “Future of Distribution Forum,” at the TravelCom conference in Dallas yesterday afternoon.

She adds: “If it doesn’t change, folks will look for other ways to solve it.”

Courtney-Wilds notes that JetBlue recently transitioned to the SabreSonic reservations’ system and ratcheted up to full participation in the four major GDSs.

The upside is that JetBlue picked up incremental business from the GDS channel, but the downside of “opening up the floodgates” is that there was an increase in travel agencies “snatching up seats that you didn’t need help filling in the first place” at a higher distribution cost, Courtney-Wilds says.

She says JetBlue doesn’t need help selling $49 tickets and, referring to increased GDS distribution costs for sometimes low-yielding tickets, Courtney-Wilds adds, “we definitely have to address [that] going forward.”

Asked what was on her wish list as far as a new financial model, Courtney-Wilds says she doesn’t have all the answers, but that the solution should lead to a variable structure where the airline can pay for distribution in areas where the carrier wants to play — and presumably not pay in less-cost-effective areas.

One reason JetBlue opted to go full-throttle in the GDSs is that it gives the airline the opportunity to tap into the high-yielding corporate-travel business in certain markets.

Referring to a lot of noise these days about airline direct-connects bypassing GDSs, Courtney-Wilds says technical issues aren’t the basis of the conversation and all of this talk will be silenced once the airline-GDS financial model is fixed.

Fellow panel member Dan Westbrook, vice president, supplier development in the Americas for Travelport GDS, told the audience that the business model may need to be “fine-tuned,” adding that most airlines are willing to pay for high-yielding business.

He adds that Travelport GDS is talking to suppliers, looking for opportunities and trying to find the right balance.

Westbrook says the ultimate solution may vary, sector to sector.

Courtney-Wilds also had some stern, if polite, words for metasearch engines, too.

In the past, she says, JetBlue’s fares would appear in metasearch engines and consumers would link into the booking path on JetBlue.com, the airline’s cheapest distribution channel.

However, today JetBlue’s inventory is displayed in metasearch along with several other booking choices in the same results box and there are greater distribution costs for the carrier if consumers book through online travel agencies instead of going to JetBlue.com.

“The economics of the channel have changed and we are looking at that,” Courtney-Wilds says.

JetBlue says it voluntarily halted flights from taking off for an hour this afternoon, but the technical glitch that caused it had nothing to do with its new SabreSonic reservations system.

“This was unrelated to our Sabre reservation system,” says JetBlue spokesman Sebastian White. “It was a centralized computer issue that inhibited our ability to properly display flight status info or dispatch flights, so we put a voluntary ground stop in place from 2:30-3:30 p.m. EST. Operations are back up and running now, and no flights were cancelled due to the outage.”

CNN reported that flights in the air were not impacted by the ground stop and that volumes were lighter than normal because of a snowstorm in the Northeast.

While much of the attention in JetBlue’s cutover to the  SabreSonic CSS as the airline’s reservations system provider has focused on new functionalities, Navitaire, the company that JetBlue largely discarded after a decade-old relationship, feels there are misperceptions about its capabilities and believes that the “true winner” in the conversion likely will be Sabre — and not necessarily JetBlue.

I reached out to Navitaire to get its take on JetBlue’s decision to convert to Sabre.

Until the transition, which began Jan. 29, JetBlue was using Navitaire’s Open Skies platform. Navitaire is transitioning its new airline customers to its New Skies system. The new platform uses a ticketless model, where funds are tied to a customer record and not an individual ticket.

Navitaire argues that ticketless New Skies is more efficient than the Sabre e-ticket model because New Skies has an integrated database, which circumvents the need to transfer data back and forth among multiple systems.

So, with little new development taking place for Open Skies, JetBlue opted for SabreSonic rather than transitioning to Navitaire’s New Skies.

Legacy Decision?

Navitaire believes legacy sensibilities played a role in JetBlue’s decision.

“Over the last two years, JetBlue has brought in all new management, creating a team that has primarily come from existing U.S. legacy carriers,” Navitaire says. “If they’ve only worked with and dealt in the legacy, traditional, IATA-bound world, it’s understandable that they would gravitate toward an industry e-ticket based solution that they are familiar with. In our experience, it’s hard for someone with a legacy airline background to truly understand the ticketless model, the cost benefits it delivers, and the flexibility that it enables.”

If economic concessions by Sabre drove JetBlue’s decision, Navitaire thinks they will be short-lived because of the alleged higher costs of operating the JetBlue-Sabre e-ticketing processes.

“With Sabre’s heavy reliance on GDS bookings, it’s in their best long-term interests to continue supporting the existing, old ways of business to drive more transactions and participation costs to their GDS side of the business,” Navitaire says. “They win on multiple fronts through improved/expanded content to agents, more agent and airline GDS transaction fees, more messaging fees from clients, etc. to line their coffers.”

For Navitaire, it’s all about the legacy world versus what it calls a “New World” approach, where airlines can be flexible and use hybrid models.

Navitaire speculates that Sabre doesn’t “have a New World-carrier ticketless product that’s positioned for the long run. If they did, American wouldn’t have opted to move away from Sabre” in favor of a new platform, Jetstream, to be provided by HP.

Misperceptions?

Speaking during JetBlue’s fourth quarter earnings call Jan. 28, a day before the cutover to Sabre, JetBlue President and CEO David Barger didn’t disparage Navitaire directly, but said the transition to Sabre would deliver a smorgasbord of new benefits.

“Transitioning to this new platform offers us the flexibility and robust tools to expand the products and services we offer our customers,” Barger said. “As a result, we believe the system will help improve the overall customer experience and further enhance the JetBlue brand. When fully implemented, the Sabre system will provide pricing flexibility that will enable us to attract more business customers, broaden ancillary revenue opportunities, and facilitate airline partnerships, all core initiatives for JetBlue.”

Navitaire believes that many in the industry have inaccurate, outdated perceptions of its products. In fact, the company says, it has 80 interline and code-share connections, ties to nine GDS platforms, a loyalty program and a travel commerce platform.

Codeshares

Navitaire says it supports codeshares on both Open Skies and New Skies. For example Virgin Blue, which is transitioning from Open Skies to New Skies, has bi-directional codeshares and interline agreements using Open Skies, Navitaire says. And, Jetstar, which had bi-directional codeshares and interline agreements through check-in on Open Skies, expanded them when it converted to New Skies last year, Navitaire says.

Navitaire points out that New Skies supports EDIFACT-compatible codeshares [Jetstar] as well as interline connections using APIs [TUIfly and Air Berlin].

Ancillary Revenue/Merchandising

Navitaire says its systems support a la carte ancillary services as well as bundled fares through New Skies and Navitaire’s Travel Commerce platform. Both systems, the company says, support locally hosted or externally connectioned inventory via APIs. Travel Commerce clients include Jetstar, Azul [founded by JetBlue founder and ex-CEO David Neeleman], Jazeera and Ryanair.

Navitaire concedes it is unaware of any comparisons of ancillary revenue functionalities — i.e. what can Sabre and others do versus Navitaire’s acumen– and adds, “It would be very interesting to see what is out there and get beyond the marketing promises into actual capabilities.”

“We’re certainly not in a position to comment on what Sabre can or cannot do, but based on JetBlue’s published information to passengers and agencies, it suggests there may be shortcomings given the JetBlue instructions to direct travelers and agents to contact the call center to book, change, manage or redeem various items,” Navitaire says. “Some of these require additional agency reporting outside of BSP/ARC.”

Pricing

Navitaire admits that Sabre has one advantage in that Sabre’s revenue management system supports O & D (Origin & Destination) forecasting and Navitaire’s SkyPrice revenue-management system does not. JetBlue had been using a revenue-management system from a third party, which does not support O & D, and presumably will be switching to Sabre’s.

Several of Navitaire’s airline customers use Sabre’s revenue management system, as well.

“We are developing our own O & D revenue management system and expect to build a better mousetrap,” Navitaire says.

Cutover Miscues?

Navitaire says it respects JetBlue’s decision to switch to Sabre and commends the airline for the work it did to make the transition.

“In the end, JetBlue faced a conversion off of Open Skies to either New Skies or one of our competitor’s reservation systems,” Navitaire says. “We would have obviously preferred a different outcome. We respect their decision and we have been honored to support their success over the past 10 years.”

Still, Navitaire points to alleged shortcomings in the reservations’ cutover, noting that many types of transactions — changes to existing reservations, credits and vouchers, agency credit shells, advance check-ins, TrueBlue redemptions and elements of new reservations — require call center support.

“This has got to be very costly,” Navitaire alleges. “This strongly suggests that the Sabre system is not customer centric, but transaction centric, and that the Sabre system (and e-tickets) was not able to accommodate several kinds of data that the seemingly ‘simple’ Open Skies system reservation-core stored and provided, with easy self-service customer access. It seems unusual that so many customer and PNR elements could not be converted in an accessible manner to enable self-service changes, Web check-in and customer credit, voucher and TrueBlue redemptions.”

JetBlue has been widely lauded — on Tnooz and elsewhere — for the transparency it has shown and the massive efforts it made to ensure a smooth transition in the switch to Sabre.

Whether some of the cutover problems that Navitaire points to are understandable bumps in the road or suggest lingering technology shortcomings, this remains to be seen.

Says Navitaire: “The Sabre marketing machinery can be quite prolific, but the track record to illustrate innovation and results isn’t always clear. Time will tell on promises versus results.”

Update

Au contraire, says Henry Harteveldt, Forrester Research’s principal analyst, airline and travel research.

Harteveldt says:

“Navitaire is correct that their ‘ticketless’ system may offer some efficiencies versus the Sabre e-ticketing system, but JetBlue’s decision to change was based on much more than that. In JetBlue’s assessment, NewSkies’ capabilities were clearly viewed as less robust than Sabre’s. The decision that JetBlue made had nothing to do with ‘comfort’ with network airline e-ticketing, but more to do with what Sabre could do in terms of helping JetBlue increase its revenue-generating capabilities compared to what New Skies was able to offer JetBlue.

“Navitaire also did not paint an accurate portrait of JetBlue’s ongoing customer service environment, either. Though it wasn’t ideal that JetBlue had to suspend some activities or conduct others only by phone during the cutover, doing so was a prudent business move given the complexity of the reservation system transition. JetBlue has been processing bookings on JetBlue.com for much of this week, as well as online check-in and supporting TrueBlue loyalty program account management. It is my understanding from JetBlue that other functions, including exchanges and refunds, will also be supported online.

“JetBlue is a more complex airline now than it was when it began 10 years ago. It is inevitable, in almost any business, that as a company grows and evolves — and becomes more complex as a result — that it requires different types of technology infrastructure to support the business. Sometimes the incumbent provider can provide that new infrastructure, and sometimes a new provider is deemed to have a better solution. JetBlue isn’t the only airline to have moved off Navitaire for Sabre. Both WestJet and Volaris either have done so or will be doing so. Even American Airlines, which literally created Sabre, is planning to move off Sabre onto the new Jetstream platform being developed by Hewlett-Packard.”