For the third time this year, my wife traveled to Rochester on Flight 36, the 8:25 p.m. JetBlue flight from New York's JFK Airport. The flight was scheduled to arrive at 10:08 p.m. For the third time in a row, my wife's flight arrived more than an hour late. In fact, this time, it did not touch down until approximately midnight.

With two of those flights, the delays weren't due to JetBlue's backup from its 9-hours-on-the-runway Valentine's Day fiasco; they occurred before those problems. What's causing the delay? One time, my wife's plane was 54th in line on the tarmac. On another, the plane simply boarded late, took off later, arrived even later, and spent a bit of time on the ground in Rochester.

JetBlue's problems go deeper than my wife's dismayingly long lag times. According to the US Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report, in 2003 JetBlue ranked third in the nation (out of 17) in on-time arrival, at 84.3 percent. By 2006, it had fallen to 17th (of 19), and its on-time arrivals dropped to 72.9 percent.

People have been willing to put up with potential delays because of JetBlue's affordable rates. But JetBlue has expanded - a lot - and now is often more expensive than other airlines. A flight from JFK to ROC, scheduled to leave March 30 and return April 1 (a random weekend in the near future) would cost $118.80 on JetBlue (after fees and taxes), but would cost only $103 on Continental and a bit more ($123) on US Airways, both through Orbitz.com. In 2006, Continental ranked 12th in on-time arrival, while US Airways ranked fourth: both well above JetBlue.

JetBlue is in trouble. What was once the very affordable alternative to traditional airlines, with a higher quality of service, has become a lumbering, expense-ridden problem.

The new Customer's Bill of Rights issued in the wake of JetBlue's Valentine's Day delays (and retroactive to February 15, the day after passengers sat on a runway for a seeming eternity) addresses how passengers will be compensated for delay-associated problems. When JetBlue adds the costs of correcting its recent goofs, the costs associated with implementing the Bill of Rights, and most important, the decreased revenue from people wary to travel on an airline whose track record has plummeted and doesn't appear to be improving, it will have to answer to its stock-holders.

David Neeleman, founder and CEO of JetBlue, emailed an apology to customers scheduled to fly in the week after Valentine's Day. That may help ease some customer concerns. However, while the free-market sorts this one out, I'll buy my wife a long, long book for her next JetBlue trip to Rochester. Old habits die hard.

David J. Kozlowski, Atlantic Avenue, Rochester(Kozlowski, an attorney, is a recent transplant to Rochester.)