In August JetBlue launched its much anticipated transatlantic service. In some ways the airline lucked out, and in some ways it didn’t — UK travel restrictions were lifted for vaccinated Americans shortly before the flights started, while US travel restrictions still haven’t been lifted for Brits.
Continue reading: JetBlue Cuts London Flights For The Fall
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Very disappointed that you removed the BLOG shortcut. I guess traffic to just that section was too much for you.
@ Lukas -- I'll probably publish a post about this a bit later on to explain the logic, but that's not what's going on here. When the site was redesigned, we received a lot of negative feedback about the front page, and frankly I wasn't very happy with it either. The front page of the blog was no longer the focal point of OMAAT for frequent readers, since new posts were published in an easier to follow way on the /blog page. We set that up so that ongoing readers had an easy place to follow all new posts.
Since the redesign, I've been asking that we once again integrate all the blog posts into the front page of the blog. The team has been working on that behind the scenes for a while now, and it's finally live as of today. The posts should now show on the homepage the same way they showed on the /blog page, with no additional scrolling required.
There's absolutely no financial or traffic motive here, and it has nothing to do with more people visiting the /blog page. Rather it was important to me that the homepage continue to be the main place that frequent readers visit, since at the end of the day they're the heart of this blog. That change went live today, and that's why the /blog page now redirects. I hope you'll agree that the homepage is much more friendly towards frequent readers than it was when the site relaunched, and you'll see and appreciate the logic.
I of course welcome feedback here (if I'm totally off base, feel free to tell me), but this was something that I requested as a genuine improvement to the user experience.
No, it's good that you changed it. Many year veteran here, it's highly appreciated that the new OMAAT homepage now has the same layout as it used to. Thank you for continuing to run the only blog in this space worth reading! Can't wait for your full mint review.
I wonder if JetBlue can maintain its London slots by flying empty planes between London and some other city, like Lille Lesquin (LIL) or Shannon (SNN)?
There was a start up airline that maintained its Chicago (ORD) slots by flying passenger flights to and from Rockford even though there might not have been many passengers.
Lucky - I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE reading all your posts and have been a fan for a long time. I HATE, HATE, HATE your new website. I've tried giving it some time to get used to it but it's just down right clunky, uninspired and frankly, frustrating trying to weed through all the crap. It's TOO BUSY and non-intuitive.
Thank you for at least making the front page more like the old blog. Sometimes the wheel just can't be re-invented! 🙂
@ JS -- I appreciate the kind words and feedback. And I hear you. We've been trying to de-clunk the site a bit since launch, because I had a similar impression to you. We're still making some tweaks and open to feedback.
Just to give you a sense of where I'm at (and I'm not at all a technical person, and I'm pretty resistant to change), personally I think the mobile version looks pretty good at this point, and I'm fairly happy with the front page of the blog, and how it's hopefully once again a simpler experience of being able to find all content there. Aside from the "latest news" section we'll be mixing content up over time, and have a few other creative things that should be launched soon.
But if you have any concrete feedback and thoughts on how to declutter (short of reverting to the old site), I'd love to hear it. And I'm also curious if you're usually reading on mobile or desktop.
@ derek -- I could be mistaken, but I believe for the time being slot requirements are waived anyway, so it's a moot point? Also keep in mind that JetBlue has only temporarily been awarded Heathrow slots, so even if slot requirements weren't eased, it might not be worth spending so much to keep slots that could be taken away next year anyway.
Lucky - I only read on desktop. Trust me, I will always read your postings no matter what. Maybe I'll give the mobile version a look and try also! Thanks for the willingness to listen to your readers. Keep up the great work!! 🙂
Ben,
Since you’re asking for feedback, I’d say the tweaks you’ve made since the ill-fated relaunch have improved it. However, I still find the colour scheme deeply off putting. I find the orange and blue to be really harsh and quite unpleasant as a combination.
Like JS, I’ll continue reading because I love the content. But does what it’s worth, the new site is still very hard on the eyes and just doesn’t feel fresh or modern, in my opinion.
Hope that helps,
John