Dear Jetblue, what is this jetting you speak of?

Trotting down Market Street on my way to Walgreens, an advertisement caught my eye. It said, "Flying. It's why we created Jetting." and it was signed by Jet Blue. To which I have to ask, what's the difference? They do seem to be synonyms. It would be a bit like Coca-Cola saying, "Drinking. It's why we created guzzling." or Hilton Hotels saying, "Relaxing. It's why we created kicking back." And by created, we do mean that we went to our thesaurus and laid claim to our favorite synonym. 

On closer inspection, flying is indeed a more generic term meaning to go through the air untethered to the planet despite the gravitational effect pulling you to the planet. Jetting does imply the more specific form of doing this untethered travel in a jet. A jet is also a little bit sexier sounding than a plane. Maybe it's all those times we heard about so-and-so bazillionaire criss-crossing the world in their new private jet. Oooh fancy fancy. A jet, huh? Or maybe it's the phrase jet setting, that means to travel all the time to interesting locales. It starts to make me think of first class a little. And that's probably why they laid claim to that particular synonym.

So is jetting a fancier way of flying? This Jet Blue ad certainly does imply that.

But is jetting actually different? JetBlue business was built on delivering a better customer experience ... one that is worthy of talking about. So better customer service, in Jet Blue's case equals a more "jetting-like" experience. According to this professional air-travel commentator, they do appear to earn their use of the word jetting. They also apparently have their own customer bill of rights and they've created this neato microstie to explain jetting to people.

Above all else, JetBlue Airways is dedicated to bringing humanity back
to air travel. We strive to make every part of your experience as simple
and as pleasant as possible. Unfortunately, there are times when things
do not go as planned. If you’re inconvenienced as a result, we think it is
important that you know exactly what you can expect from us. That’s
why we created our Customer Bill of Rights. These Rights will always
be subject to the highest level of safety and security for our customers
and crewmembers.

I commend them for all of this and feel like that through their actions, they were able to avoid this being a little cheap linguistic gag and more of a mantra. Other companies try to do this, but they don't put their actions behind it. That said, they can't really think people are going to adopt it. "You know, I was thinking of flying to Denver, but then I said, hell, I think I'll go ahead and jet there instead."

One last thing, I can get jet lag, but I don't think I've ever had fly lag.

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