For a US airline, JetBlue is good. In reality, JetBlue is fine, but I really don't get all that excited about them, and I don't pay more for them. They have a couple more inches of legroom, and treat you a bit more humanely than the legacies. But their on-time performance is lousy, and I have been late on them a number of times. I understand this given the location of their hubs; but at the same time, they don't have to deal with widebody, long haul flying or a diverse fleet. And if you do a lot of flying, to a lot of different places and use your FF miles, I prefer to stay with a legacy. Ultimately, I couldn't care less about Direct TV and free pretzels if the chance of being late or having my flight cancelled increases. Especially when they don't have enough transcon hub and spoke traffic to get creative on rerouting you in the case of a cancellation or overbooking.

To me, JetBlue's reputation is more a function of contrast in the US aviation market. By that, I mean that it is less about how good JetBlue is, and more about how bad the legacies are. JetBlue doesn't have to work that hard to be better than the legacies. Put them up against many foreign carriers, however, and they are certainly nothing special.