leaving on a jet plane, but no, not really

Tasha sums up my thoughts the recent JetBlue airfare deal perfectly:

So JetBlue has a slightly bizarro deal on right now: The “all-you-can-jet pass,” essentially a $600 pass to fly as often as you want on JetBlue, anywhere they go, for the month of Sept. 8 to October 8. This is a weird deal; it just isn’t how most people fly, with the possible exception of business travelers and salesmen, whom JetBlue would presumably much rather stick with the lucrative business-class bill.

But I’m weirdly tempted. I’m a sucker for the all-you-can-eat buffet, the season pass, the monthly CTA fee instead of the pay-by-the-trip card, the frequent buyer’s club, the all-day unlimited-trips deal, anything where you pay a flat fee and then it’s up to you to make it worth your while. And there’s something different and luxurious and lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous about the idea of just being able to hop on a plane whenever and go wherever, as often as I want. Never mind that my vacation time this year is pretty much spoken for, or that JetBlue mostly doesn’t go where I want to go, and the places I DO want to go, I could get to cheaper. I’m betting that with this pass, they’re selling more the idea of freedom, the sense that JetBlue is your private plane, just waiting to whisk you away, as though a trip from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon was a taxi ride between points downtown.

If I didn’t have a job, I think I’d be all over this in a pretty crazy way. Never mind the lack of logic in buying a service that will take me across the country to places I have no particular desire to be. I’d do it just for the travel. Who knows, maybe there’s something fascinating waiting in Newburgh, New York or Sarasota, Florida or Burlington, Vermont that I never would have known about otherwise, because I never would have thought to fly there. Or maybe it’d just be fun to treat an airline like one of those downtown hop-on, hop-off tour busses. I wonder how much more they’d charge for my own flight attendant to tell me about the splendors of Rutland or White Plains as I arrived.

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