JetBlue: Newsweek's Allen Sloan nails it!

Last 2 paragraphs of his column on JetBlue's Valentine's weekend meltdown:

What still intrigues me is how a smart, customer-focused outfit like JetBlue shut down service to markets like Richmond, Va.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and Portland, Maine, that are an easy one-day drive from New York and let those passengers sit in JFK for days instead of chartering buses. JetBlue's Dervin says it's because the company felt that roads were still unsafe for days after the storm.

A final note: Amtrak runs trains from New York to Richmond, Raleigh and Portland. I should have asked JetBlue why it didn't put its passengers on trains, but even I—an Amtrak Select Plus customer, yet—never considered rail service as an option. The lesson: we think of government-owned Amtrak as money-losing socialism, but the money-losing airline industry as a bunch of noble capitalists. Maybe we should re-examine our national transportation policies the way JetBlue is rethinking its customer-service policies.

Perhaps Mr. Sloan will pick up this topic in his comment, "The Sloan Sessions," on public radio's "Marketplace Morning Report." In any case, you can e-mail him here.

UK's First Group buying Greyhound Lines--

specifically its parent Laidlaw. Let's hope First Group's experience is better than that of its countryman Stagecoach, which bought CoachUSA in 1999 for £1.2 billion and within 3 years wrote down 73% of its value.

What do the credit analysts think of First's purchase? Not much. They don't like Laidlaw's weak balance sheet and worry that it may taint First Group's.

So how's this about trains? First Group is also a major train operator in the UK. So was a company called Sea Containers, through its subsidiary GNER--until it filed for bankruptcy and got its train license yanked.