Babble: JetBlue goes Starbucks on legroom
Anyone who isn't a cave-dweller is probably familiar with the Starbucks' experience. You can order a "tall", "venti", or "grande", a wonderfully pretentious trio of ways to say "large". Of course, the fast food industry was probably the first to pull this marketing trick, changing "small", "medium", and "large" to "huge", "super-size", and "mega-gut-buster" or whatever they call them now.
Anyway, I digress. I booked my first flight on JetBlue the other day (they just started offering flights from Chicago), and while selecting my seats, I came across the beautiful legend on the right. Now, I'm not freakishly tall, but I'm tall enough to enjoy my legroom. So, I was initially pleased to see my choices: "plenty of legroom", "most legroom", and "more legroom". Everybody wins, right?
Well, of course, just like the Starbucks sizes, one option is clearly the "best". The problem, from a usability standpoint, is that by trying to appeal to consumers with this message that everything is bigger and better, these sorts of product labels leave us with no information at all. At Starbucks or McDonalds, you inevitably memorize the options and can at least look at the size of the cup. For my JetBlue online experience, however, I had no such luxury. I could only make the natural assumption that "most legroom" was better than "plenty" or "more". We'll see next month if my instincts were right. On the bright side, I will get at least 34° of seat pitch, so I've got that going for me.
CoachJason
· Saturday, January 20Peter, I had the same exact cognitive curiosity with online booking last week for a JetBlue flight I took yesterday. Here's the shakedown: The chart doesn't lie. As with all flights, the "Most legroom" are the exit rows. Then the trade-off comes into play: Do you want to exit the aircraft upon landing sooner (Plenty of legroom) or later (More legroom)? Also, having become a flight guru this past year, people will also trade the comfort factor of not having someone in the seat next to them for being able to deplane sooner--meaning, when people choose seats, the plane usually fills from the front back because their is a premium on getting off the plane as quickly as possible. I usually put a premium on having a seat with no one next to me, or an window seat in case I want to sleep, and get a row further towards the back of the plane, but having to wait longer to deplane. With most airlines, the better (and more expensive) seats flow from front back: 1sr Class, Business Class, Economy Plus, Coach, and they are price accordingly. The JetBlue seating plan flips this around. There is no 1st or Business Class. And the roomier seats are in the back. Interesting idea. It was a good flight for me. I ended up in row 13, with no one else, though most rows had 2 or 3 people.
And of course, they are really advertising now that each seat has 34 channels of DirectTV. From staring at a 5" screen for three hours, I had a whopping headache. Also, if you choose to watch a movie (I didn't notice any premium channels--but I watched one on USA), you have to deal with commercials. I know... what a tough world we live in!! heh heh..
Have fun on your flight! Let us know how it went.