Jetstar's $50 sweetener

BY ANDREW JANES

After a nightmare debut in the domestic air travel market, Jetstar is attempting to repair some self-inflicted brand damage.

Until October 9, the Qantas-owned budget airline will offer travellers whose flight arrives more than an hour late $50 off their next Jetstar flight.

Since launching on June 10, Jetstar has been plagued by problems. A ground-equipment glitch on launch day caused two-hour delays, and a week later Jetstar revealed that only 20 per cent of its flights were leaving within 15 minutes of schedule.

The rejigging of timetables led to thousands of passengers having their flight times changed and there have been complaints about the airline's policy of not checking in passengers who arrive less than 30 minutes before a flight.

On June 20 the 30-minute policy resulted in airport police being called in to deal with about 30 angry passengers stranded at Auckland Airport.

The airline said yesterday that since implementing its revised schedule on June 24 it had regularly achieved results of more than 80 per cent on time performance.

Flight Centre spokeswoman Marie Pilkington said "quite a number" of the agency's corporate clients were choosing not to fly with Jetstar because the risk of missing important meetings was too high.

The $50 offer should appeal to the non-business market but it would take longer for Jetstar to repair its image in the corporate market, she said.

Two branding experts were divided on whether the offer would resonate with the travelling public.

Brand strategist Brian Richards said the $50 offer was essentially an apology to inconvenienced travellers and that Jetstar would be better off taking more positive action to boost its image.

But Mr Richards said he did not think Jetstar's problems had caused it a great deal of brand damage. The airline probably had three to six months to sort its problems out before the public were really turned off

Auckland University of Technology senior lecturer and branding specialist Mark Glynn said: "The problems in the last few weeks haven't helped them at all but they didn't have much of a brand name to start with."

It was important to be quick off the mark and demonstrate sincerity when marketing in a crisis, he said. "So far they've been a little slow to react."

The $50 voucher offer would help restore faith "with jaded passengers".

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