On Tuesday, jetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater quit his job dramatically by unleashing expletives over an intercom at a plane full of passengers, grabbing two beers and sliding down the emergency chute.

Slater has since become a folk hero, quickly amassing more than 138,000 Facebook fans, being the subject of a “WWSSD” page (What Would Steven Slater Do), and being featured on countless news programs and talk shows.

The incident has created a tricky situation for jetBlue, one of the first companies to use social media to be transparent and address customers’ concerns and compliments via the Web. With 1.5 million @jetBlue Twitter followers and and 300K jetBlue Airways Facebook fans, jetBlue employs a team of employees to handle its Web presence.

But Slater has stifled jetBlue’s social media strategy. Due to legal issues and other factors, jetBlue has not mentioned the incident via Facebook and only offered a few brief replies via Twitter. The company did issue a tongue-in-cheek response via blog post on Wednesday, though avoiding any real details.

Clearly others are talking. jetBlue chatter has dramatically spiked above other airlines and even its own previous chatter, despite a strong historical social media presence.

And many of the words being used to describe the situation are negative. In the month of July, 78% of the posts surrounding jetBlue were positive. But in the days surrounding the incident, 40% of posts have been negative.

Nearly 70% of chatter today around jetBlue has included the term “Slater.”

Since many are saying they would have reacted the same way Slater did, the increased buzz could end up being a good thing for jetBlue. If you were in charge of jetBlue’s social media strategy, how would you handle the response?