JetBlues social media strategy has been tested this week with the saga of flight attendant Steve Slater. After questions about the airline's social media silence - and its bypassing of a seemingly easy way to piggyback on the event to build its brand - the latest intelligence about what really happened on the flight suggests JetBlue took the perfect approach.

Briefly, Slater is the flight attendant who quit his position after cursing out a passenger on the plane's intercom, grabbing two beers from the cart and then activating the inflatable evacuation slide to exit in grand style. His purported reason? A customer had cursed him out, caused a head injury with an overstuffed bag and then refused to apology.

Doubts About His Story

However this customer has yet to be found. Also, as authorities question the other passengers on the plane, some are saying that Slater was the aggressive one. Even if his account is completely accurate, authorities have pointed out he could have seriously injured or even killed a worker on the ground if he or she had been in the way of the chute, which activates very quickly. One of the charges Slater is facing is reckless endangerment.

These points, though, pale in comparison to the huge fanfare that has accompanied the story. Slater's admirers have sprung up on Facebook and Twitter. His story - an aggrieved worker who tells his boss to shove it, essentially - has struck a nerve.

So where was JetBlue in all this?

The airline has a fairly robust social media operation.  Yet it was silent immediately after the incident - even as Facebook and Twitter were discussing it nonstop. Then it released on its blog a non-statement acknowledging what happened and then declining to comment further as the investigation unfolded.  It was funny ("Sometimes the weird news is about us" it began), it acknowledged the reaction ("plenty of others have already formed opinions on the matter. Like the entire Internet"), and it even took the opportunity to toot its own horn ("while this episode may feed your inner Office Space, we just want to take this space to recognize our 2,300 fantastic, awesome and professional Inflight Crewmembers for delivering the JetBlue Experience you've come to expect of us").

Many wondered why JetBlue didn't push it further if only to ride the event's coattails - a possibility that most likely has occurred to JetBlue as well. "Usually when a flight attendant gets called out it's for something they have done wrong that pissed off passengers," said Jonathan Bellinger, VP-social media strategy at Omnicom Group's Ketchum. (via Ad Age). "But when an attendant does something where passengers say they wish they would do the same thing at their own job, that's great. It's a net positive story for the brand."  "What not to do is to stay silent," is what Michael Levine, the author of books like "Guerrilla P.R." and "Guerrilla P.R. 2.0." "Don’t do nothing" advised. (via the New York Times). "This is a teachable moment" for JetBlue, he said, "to try to create context for what happened."

What JetBlue Doesn't Want its Customers To Think About

But as differing versions of Slater’s behavior emerged, JetBlue is now credited with taking just the right approach. Depending on how he is eventually perceived, the story could easily morph into one JetBlue would prefer to avoid: the hassles of air travel, the sometimes dictatorial nature of airline and transportation authorities and their dreaded "dead face" as Peggy Noonan described such employees in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece she wrote about the incident fittingly called "We Pay Them to Be Rude to Us."

It could even evoke in collective memory one of the reasons why JetBlue first launched its social media strategy - the infamous Valentine's Day storm that stranded hundreds of passengers on a tarmac in miserable conditions.