Just last month, United increased its change fee on domestic flights from $150 to $200 and I bashed the move. That, of course, didn’t prevent US Airways, Delta, and then American from following like sheep. Those increases left a bigger gap between change fees at the legacy airlines and those at the low cost carriers. You can see where this is going right? Yes, JetBlue has now increased its change fee, but it didn’t just use a blunt instrument. It used a little finesse to make it easier to explain to travelers.

Previously, JetBlue had a tiered change fee based on the price of the ticket. Now it’s keeping that structure but adding an extra tier. And fees are going up. Here’s how it breaks down:

As you can see, this means the fee now tops out at $150 whereas it was only at $100 before. For everyone except those who bought tickets worth between $100 and $149, the fee will go up. Well, for the most part, at least.

The fee itself is based on one way fares. So let’s say you bought a roundtrip ticket made up of two one ways of $80 each. Even though the roundtrip ticket costs $160, the fee will be only $75 because the two one way fares were less than $100 each.

Complex? Yes, but JetBlue doesn’t even need to explain that last bit. The benefit always goes to the traveler in the form of a lower fee than what’s expected. So just publishing the three tiers and then having a few people surprised by lower actual fees isn’t bad.

But hold on. There’s nothing new in this that’s great for travelers. Yes, the tiered structure makes more sense. It prevents travelers from being in a situation where the fee is $200 on a $100 ticket, as we see with the legacy airlines. That means people won’t just throw the ticket away, but that’s not a new thing. There is one other piece to this change, however.

JetBlue is now also introducing a variable change fee depending how far out you are from the date of travel. If you make a change 60 days or more before departure, it’s a flat $75 regardless of the price of the ticket. The tiered structure only goes into effect if it’s within 60 days of travel. This is what I really like about this change.

The legacy airlines look at change fees in a fairly one-dimensional way – will there be a net increase in revenue after the change is made? JetBlue, however, looks at the narrative as well. How can it justify the change to a consumer? Will it be something that the consumer will understand and accept?

With this move, JetBlue can tell a story. It can explain how when people change further in advance, there’s a better chance that JetBlue can re-sell that seat before departure. So it will charge a lower penalty when that happens a couple of months out, but when it gets closer JetBlue will charge more because it becomes harder to re-sell the seat.

It sounds good, so consumers are more likely to accept it. And the reality is that it will likely cost JetBlue very little in revenue. How many people make changes more than 60 days in advance? It can’t be that many in the scheme of things. Most changes happen closer to departure. So the number of people who can actually take advantage of this lower fee will be minimal, but it will still benefit the brand to have it out there.

Good work, JetBlue. You found a way to increase your change fee in a way that’s more consumer-friendly. It also will result in a big increase in change fee revenue. Nice job.

When JetBlue first launched, it used inflight entertainment as one of the greatest initial product differentiators of all time, and now it’s trying to do it again with a new breed of wifi. Is this really going to have the same impact? I’m far from convinced, but it’s an interesting play.

I imagine most of us know the JetBlue story. When the airline launched over a decade ago, it was the first to put live television in an airplane. I seem to recall that the original plan was to charge for it, but in the end, the draw of the product was considered to be so important that it was offered for free. The brand was originally built around this, and it instantly communicated that JetBlue was a high quality kind of low cost carrier. It was a brilliant move.

Since that time, many have copied JetBlue’s original plan. Heck, Frontier and United actually use systems owned by JetBlue’s LiveTV subsidiary. But they aren’t the only ones. Delta introduced television on its failed JetBlue-competitor, Song. Song may have failed, but the TVs stuck around. And of course, Virgin America has it as well. But it now goes beyond that. You can watch a handful of live TV channels on Southwest on your own device, for example. This isn’t nearly the powerful differentiator it used to be.

Since that time, JetBlue has done a great job of building a strong brand, but it hasn’t found that next killer innovation. (Sorry, JetBlue, but those boxes of food that will survive a nuclear winter don’t count.) In fact, the airline has shown restraint when it comes to rolling out the next step in inflight entertainment… wifi.

Strangely enough, JetBlue was fairly early in deciding to try out wifi when it created its one test airplane, BetaBlue. The airline wrongly thought that people really just cared about checking email. So a slow, narrowband solution that would really only allow people to check email would work, right? No. Not at all. BetaBlue quietly lost its wifi along with its Yahoo and Blackberry logos.

Meanwhile, other airlines raced to install wifi. Most airlines in the US have gone with Gogo for their domestic offerings. The result is that wifi is widely available, but it’s not lightning-fast. Sometimes it slows to a crawl depending upon how many people are using it. (My wife was on a US Airways flight yesterday that had such slow connectivity that it was unusable.) And it also dies once you get over water, an issue for airlines that do a lot of flying to Hawai’i or the Caribbean. Southwest went with Row 44, and while the speeds aren’t terrible, they aren’t what you’ll find on the ground either. Southwest started off with a $5 per flight intro price, but that has since gone up to $8, still a bargain compared to what the other airlines charge.

While all this was happening, JetBlue sat around waiting for something new and better. Did the airline miss out on the chance to become like Virgin America and AirTran and be one of the first airlines with wifi fleetwide? Yes. But JetBlue is instead banking on a different story. It’s thinking that by putting on a superior wifi product, it will reap the benefits.

The problem is that it’s still not live. The official word is that the first airplane will have wifi up and running by summer. The necessary satellite is up there, and now they just need to get this thing working and then approved by the feds… some day.

The airline clearly thinks that it’s getting close because it has ramped up talking about its offering. The first 30 airplanes will have free wifi on board. And there’s talk that there may be a free option going forward. It’s that “freemium” model where you get a base level of service for free, but you can get higher speeds if you pay.

How high will these speeds be? The airline is acting like it will be as fast as it is in your living room. I don’t know about you, but I have Verizon FiOS and I can download at over 30 Mbps. Are we talking about speeds as fast as I can get in my living room? Or are we talking about speeds as fast as someone with DSL gets? I really don’t care what’s promised. I want to see it in action.

The folks at JetBlue clearly think they’re on to something, because they’re starting to talk. I have to assume that means they are really starting to understand what they can deliver and how much it will cost. That’s encouraging. But will it be the game-changer that gets people to flee other airlines? It will at least make them competitive for those customers who want to be connected in the air, but I don’t know that it will do much beyond that. I suppose I need to reserve final judgment until I’ve had the chance to use it.

In annoyingly terse brief this week, JetBlue announced that it would introduce a “premium transcon product.” I call it annoying because they told us virtually nothing else except that plans will be revealed later this year. So, that leaves us to make wild guesses. If you were JetBlue, what would this look like?

JetBlue announced that Airspace will open a pay-per-use lounge in Terminal 5 at JFK in May. The private lounge will have plenty of freebies on the inside, but you have to pay $20 or more each time you want to use it. Do you like this model? Is it better or worse than a traditional lounge model?

Apparently JetBlue CEO Dave Barger was sending love notes today when he said JetBlue looks “forward to deepening and expanding the relationship with American.” This is very consistent with JetBlue’s interest in growing partnerships with airlines all over the place, but is it the right thing for American? After all, what made sense for American before may not make sense post-US Airways merger, right?

Wrong. That could be true in some instances, of course, but I have no doubt that a stronger relationship with JetBlue is a good thing for American.

I kind of look at JetBlue as the nicotine patch for American. American has long had a love affair with New York because of its historical presence and standing on big business routes like LA, London, and Sao Paulo. But American also competes on a lot of mid-size routes like New York to Cleveland, Columbus, Nashville, and St Louis. And I’m not convinced those are worth flying for the airline.

For American, the rationale is probably that some big corporate client needs to fly to those places, so American has to fly there. But with United covering them from Newark and Delta doing the same from LaGuardia, there’s a lot of competition. Just because some big corporate client needs to go somewhere doesn’t mean your airline should be the one to take them there.

American is at a disadvantage in New York simply because it neglected to grow the business when it could have been creative. Instead, Delta took any opportunity it could find and has built a formidable competitor with greater breadth and similar if not better depth in overlapping markets. With JFK and LaGuardia slot-restricted, American doesn’t have any real opportunity to grow, and really, it probably shouldn’t now anyway.

Instead, American can be very strategic about this. It should pick and choose the markets that are profitable from New York and serve them well. For everything else, why bother? Well, some people will undoubtedly make the argument that you have to keep serving all these markets for sales purposes. Those corporate deals will completely fall apart and everyone will run away if you stop serving, say, Columbus. That argument has been used for years on all kinds of routes. When I was at United, the airline “had” to keep flying empty planes from JFK to London because corporate accounts demanded it. Guess what? When we stopped flying the route, the airline didn’t fall apart.

But to simply cut these routes and go cold-turkey has to give a lot of people at American withdrawal symptoms. That’s where JetBlue comes in. Right now, American AAdvantage members can earn miles on flights from New York and Boston to cities where American doesn’t fly. It’s a nice little partnership but it’s not going to do that much for either airline.

What if the airlines up their game here? What if these miles started counting toward elite status? What if there were reciprocal elite benefits? What if it was rolled out to every route across both systems? What if there was codesharing? In other words, what if this started to look more like the partnership American has with Alaska?

And then, what if JetBlue started moving into some of the markets that American currently fills? JetBlue has become more attractive to business travelers, especially in Boston, and it could build up New York more that way as well. Just think what JetBlue might do if American found a way to get those slots over to JetBlue. It could be a beautiful thing.

It would allow American to pull out of markets without completely killing its presence. Just as some people find it easier to quit with a nicotine patch, American might find it easier to reduce New York with a partner picking up the slack, at least in some key markets.

Of course, JetBlue doesn’t have a first class cabin, so those who rely solely on upgrades may not be thrilled. But then again, those who rely solely on upgrades probably hate flying American’s little single class regional jets on many of these routes anyway. If they haven’t already gone over to Delta, they’ll consider JetBlue a big upgrade.

Of course, with new management, American might decide it won’t need a crutch and it could just go cold turkey in New York. But with a strong partner wanting to make that partnership even stronger, why would you?

[Original JetBlue photo via Christopher Parypa / Shutterstock.com, Original American photo via Christopher Parypa / Shutterstock.com]