JetBlue Airways

JetBlue Airways

Kevin Crowley, Sr. Analyst, Ground Safety Programs at JetBlue, has been with the U.S. airline since the beginning. The seventh-largest airline in North America by passengers carried, JetBlue’s crew members work around the clock to keep passengers safe and operations running efficiently. 

Crowley is at the center of all of it. His team is responsible for the airline’s corporate safety program which covers ground safety, change management, and risk evaluation for operations including products, processes, and manuals. His team hosts the organization’s certified quality auditors. Dubbed the “Blue Crew,” they work to assess effectiveness and audit processes and risk. 

The Blue Crew streamlines safety processes by going digital 

Crew members learn about safety from day one – how to handle aircraft safely, safe ergonomic movement, and processes. This team of auditors touch all groups across the organization: technical operations (maintenance), in-flight (flight attendants), flight operations (pilots), and more. They step in when an investigation is needed and conduct regular process audits called “Blue City Self Assessments (BCSA’s)” to ensure everything is running smoothly. 

A typical day for an operations supervisor has many time pressures – addressing challenges such as staffing or equipment issues, fleet launches, or delayed flights, plus supporting operations across ticket counters, gates, jetbridges, and the ground crew. 

Before SafetyCulture platform, JetBlue’s field investigations and audits were recorded on paper and the data was manually entered into spreadsheets, taking valuable time and creating a delay between auditing and information sharing. As a result, Crowley and the team of Safety Analysts noticed a lack of visibility into safety processes. There was no one way to keep crew members accountable for completing every step of the process, which made it challenging to identify areas of improvement or get to the root of potential risks. 

Armed with SafetyCulture platform, the Blue Crew jumped into action. They began completing unannounced observation audits. SafetyCulture platform’s mobile functionality streamlined their previously clunky processes, making it easier than ever to complete audits and identify issues in the field. 

Once logged into SafetyCulture platform for the day, supervisors can see easily what inspections they need to complete, the status of weekly and monthly goals, and the operational issues to be solved each day.

“Overall, feedback from the team using SafetyCulture platform has been great. From a process standpoint, everyone was so used to using a clunky paper and pen process. This is fast and accurate, especially the ability to integrate logic into our inspection templates. SafetyCulture platform is allowing us to get more details than we have in the past.” – Kevin Crowley 

The safety team also plans to build a data dashboard by integrating with Tableau through SafetyCulture platform’s open API. “We’re looking forward to building an interactive dashboard because it is going to make it easier for our team to input data and easily dissect it.”

JetBlue Safety Team uses engaging videos to communicate with auditors in the field

Crowley is always looking for effective ways to communicate with his team members conducting audits in the field.

JetBlue uses SafetyCulture platform’s video communication tool, Heads Up to create engaging safety communications for his team of ground safety auditors. Crowley’s goal is to create accurate content with a bit of flair – something funny and informal for employees to enjoy, without ever having to leave SafetyCulture platform. Communications include performance updates, FAQ’s, and SafetyCulture training tips.

The ground safety team is taking advantage of the viewing data on the backend. In SafetyCulture platform, Crowley can easily see which crew members have and have not viewed each video, for how long, and if they’ve acknowledged the message. 

“The feedback from team members is that with Heads Up, it’s like someone is talking directly to us, it’s a relatable and friendly way to communicate. We’ve been making these communications fun, and I can see that people are watching.”