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B6 504 EWR-FLL diverted to BDL, calling for police on board the aircraft

B6 504 EWR-FLL diverted to BDL, calling for police on board the aircraft

Old Oct 31, 2011, 7:58 am
  #46  
 
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Another contributing factor is that this happened on the weekend. And who works on Saturday - the most junior lowest seniority folks at the airline, the FAA, and the airport. In some cases these are the new hires least equipped to deal with a problem they haven't seen before. And depending on the organization, it is not that easy to reach the big dog - especially on Saturday.

The Captain should have been able to reach Barger direct. I suspect that the B6 dispatch and operations center became quickly overloaded and were focused on getting planes on the ground while they still had fuel. And they probably had minimum weekend staffing populated by the newest and most junior dispatchers and supervisors.

Some years ago when the AA MD-80 sat on the ground for 14 or so hours after a divert to Austin, no one stepped up to the plate. It was easier to let everyone sit on the airplane. And wx was not even a problem.
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 8:04 am
  #47  
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Originally Posted by ian_btv
Nice one, B6 flight ops. Epic fail, and >again< it's you. There is NO reason why emergency procedures couldn't have been implemented. This is the Northeast ... there is >always< a way to get people to safety in a snowstorm/icestorm, whatever. Many, many emergency vehicles and personnel available, and who >would< have been, given the scores and scores of people whose lives were put at risk.

Kudos to the pilot and crew who tried to make the best of a terrible scenario. What a horrible embarrassment for them. Please let's all remember that their performance is what keep us coming back and not running the other way in terror. I hope that fate is kind to them when their current employer tanks ...
What about BDL? Why are you not blaming THEM? Why wasn't a gate made available within 7 HOURS? If no gates (which seems like such a lie) why weren't there buses to drive the passengers to the terminal MUCH EARLIER than after 7 hours of being stuck on a plane? BDL is SILENT. What on earth was THEIR PROBLEM?
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 8:36 am
  #48  
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I would have given them an emergency, it's called be the crazy passenger and they'd have no choice but to taxi the plane and deplane everyone. F that, I'm not the one .

Simple task: pretend you're going to open the airplane door yourself and they'll call authorities fast .
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 9:14 am
  #49  
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Originally Posted by Fanjet
Can those holding jetBlue at full blame tell me how is a flight crew suppose to get the airports to assist them from inside the plane? Should the co-pilot jettison out the cockpit window and commandeer a set of airstairs, a transport bus, and clear the snow off the tarmac (can't forget that part)?
Unless the airport is completely depopulated or overrun by zombies this is an utterly specious argument. There are JetBlue employees in there.

Originally Posted by Fanjet
Congress did jacksh*t to set up viable contigency plans at airports when weather rears its ugly head. Which airports should be designated diversionary airports? Are they adequately equiped to handle a large influx of aircraft? I hold the airport authority more to blame for leaving these passengers stranded than jetBlue... no one in Washington gave them any guidance in these matters.
Oh, so now Congress should be writing irrops plans for the airlines? I thought the argument was that Congress should stop meddling in airline ops. A responsible transportation provider shouldn't need Congress to tell them where to land, BDL, BTV or BGR. OTOH, B6 in critical situations seems run like a high school cheerleaders' bake sale and in need of adult supervision.

Originally Posted by kerflumexed
Another contributing factor is that this happened on the weekend. And who works on Saturday - the most junior lowest seniority folks... I suspect that the B6 dispatch and operations center became quickly overloaded... And they probably had minimum weekend staffing populated by the newest and most junior dispatchers and supervisors.
Well, call people back in, for God's sake. They're home in Queens watching football, not on Mars. I worked for years in network TV news. Junior staffers run the desks on Saturday and Sunday evenings, but if a big story breaks the veterans flood the zone and the newbies switch to running the coffee machines. An airline is not so different -- or shouldn't be. B6 flunks this test repeatedly.

Originally Posted by BeantownDisneyFan
I have a bunch of Boarding Passes from previous jetBlue flights, where jetBlue operations were significantly disrupted by a variety of factors that exceeded the (nominal) threshold of jetBlue....

One need not be a Rocket Scientist to conclude that jetBlue lacks the infrastructure to respond to irregularities like they are regularities.
The odd thing is B6 seems more willing to sustain significant brand damage and goodwill loss in these cases than develop the reflexes to solve these problems.

Last edited by BearX220; Oct 31, 2011 at 11:19 am
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 10:58 am
  #50  
 
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Originally Posted by BeantownDisneyFan
One need not be a Rocket Scientist to conclude that jetBlue lacks the infrastructure to respond to irregularities like they are regularities.
JetBlue has plenty of infrastructure in place. The problem is that they didn't have enough smart people onboard readyto make decisions.

The weather situation was forecasted at least 24 hours out; plenty of time for the airline to consult with all affected station managers to decide on manpower, delay and diversion recovery, and consider pre-cancellations to protect the operation.

The fact that the crews onboard the stranded aircraft proclaimed they were getting "no help from their company" suggests that the BDL manager and staff made no effort to alert HQ of their ability to service both scheduled and unscheduled traffic in a safe and expeditious manner.
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 11:04 am
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Not that I am defending anyone here, but isn't the true crux of the problem the failed ILS at EWR? I don't think anyone could have predicted that. Granted, B6 and BDL should have had the appropriate contingency plans in place to deal with the aftermath.
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 11:14 am
  #52  
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Originally Posted by volvo99
JetBlue has plenty of infrastructure in place. The problem is that they didn't have enough smart people onboard readyto make decisions.

The weather situation was forecasted at least 24 hours out; plenty of time for the airline to consult with all affected station managers to decide on manpower, delay and diversion recovery, and consider pre-cancellations to protect the operation.

The fact that the crews onboard the stranded aircraft proclaimed they were getting "no help from their company" suggests that the BDL manager and staff made no effort to alert HQ of their ability to service both scheduled and unscheduled traffic in a safe and expeditious manner.
It sounds as though operations at B6 would not proactively kick the problem up to senior management. Given what happened in 2007 and the fall out, one would assume that Barger would want to be immediately informed of the problem. At that point he personally could have called upon senior BDL management. At the least, fully be ready to defend yourself if BDL airport management told him to shove it.
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 11:20 am
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Originally Posted by Analise
What about BDL? Why are you not blaming THEM? Why wasn't a gate made available within 7 HOURS? If no gates (which seems like such a lie) why weren't there buses to drive the passengers to the terminal MUCH EARLIER than after 7 hours of being stuck on a plane? BDL is SILENT. What on earth was THEIR PROBLEM?
Exactly. This was forecasted at least 24hrs out; plenty of time for JetBlue to set up a conference call with station managers to set up a game plan for adequate staffing, delay and diversion recovery, as well as consider pre-cancellations and reposition planes and crews to recover quickly.
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 11:26 am
  #54  
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Originally Posted by volvo99
Exactly. This was forecasted at least 24hrs out; plenty of time for JetBlue to set up a conference call with station managers to set up a game plan for adequate staffing, delay and diversion recovery, as well as consider pre-cancellations and reposition planes and crews to recover quickly.
So you don't hold BDL responsible at all for keeping a plane out there for 7 hours? I don't understand that. There was no way of knowing in advance that this October storm would hammer New England as it did. So why didn't BDL get buses to that plane SOONER if they refused to make gates available? Why did it take 7 hours for that to happen?
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 11:26 am
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Originally Posted by volvo99
This was forecasted at least 24hrs out; plenty of time for JetBlue to set up a conference call with station managers to set up a game plan for adequate staffing, delay and diversion recovery, as well as consider pre-cancellations and reposition planes and crews to recover quickly.
Yup. The sixth or seventh time you are shocked (and your operations destroyed and customers traumatized) by a severe weather situation that was well forecast, you go from looking overwhelmed to looking incompetent.

Originally Posted by Analise
There was no way of knowing in advance that this October storm would hammer New England as it did.
The ferocity of the storm / snow accumulation was somewhat underestimated but its presence and path of travel very well understood. You can argue that it is stupid to dispatch BOS-EWR flights, 40-minute flights, into the teeth of such a thing. It is stupider still not to activate irrop contingency plans as the storm is hitting. B6 seems to always be thunderstuck, and totally unprepared, for these increasingly routine weather incidents. Long-term weather patterns in the NE US are not getting any more benign. Read the papers.
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 11:28 am
  #56  
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BDL's response to the public is to say nothing. Sorry, they are JUST AS CULPABLE for not making any gates available.
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 11:29 am
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Originally Posted by ellinj
Not that I am defending anyone here, but isn't the true crux of the problem the failed ILS at EWR? I don't think anyone could have predicted that. Granted, B6 and BDL should have had the appropriate contingency plans in place to deal with the aftermath.
That's a mechanical problem that just can't be anticipated. I think the real issue is that JetBlue seems to have a hard time getting all the stakeholders involved in preparing a game plan to deal effectively with severe weather and the aftermath in delay and diversion recovery.

But then again, should we really be surprised considering how much companies leverage into the "lean manufacturing" and "just in time" philosopy that leaves little maneuvering in case of a severe disruption to the supply chain, whether it be a tsunami, labor conflict, or in this case, a bad storm? Time for JetBlue to assess themselves in the mirror and contemplate the consequences of being a big airline with a startup mentality.
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 11:34 am
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Originally Posted by Analise
BDL's response to the public is to say nothing. Sorry, they are JUST AS CULPABLE for not making any gates available.
BDL may have been in a position where no gates were available; either frozen stiff or taken up by earlier arriving aircraft, leaving no place to park. If that is the case, the BDL airport manager (the city), should have published a Notice to Airman and alerted the FAA command center as to the degraded capability of the airport. Also, if the JetBlue BDL station manager was on top of things, he'd alert HQ as to the situation and given JetBlue planners reason to consider other airports to divert to.
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 11:43 am
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Originally Posted by volvo99
That's a mechanical problem that just can't be anticipated. I think the real issue is that JetBlue seems to have a hard time getting all the stakeholders involved in preparing a game plan to deal effectively with severe weather and the aftermath in delay and diversion recovery.

But then again, should we really be surprised considering how much companies leverage into the "lean manufacturing" and "just in time" philosopy that leaves little maneuvering in case of a severe disruption to the supply chain, whether it be a tsunami, labor conflict, or in this case, a bad storm? Time for JetBlue to assess themselves in the mirror and contemplate the consequences of being a big airline with a startup mentality.
Usually after something like the 2007 operational meltdown a written contigency plan is put into place that goes from pilot all the way up the chain to CEO/COO. If the pilot and flight operations can't satisfication out of the airport authority, it gets kicked up to a designated senior officer. Since this is not 1986, reaching a senior manager is not an issue.

The airline business is a 24/7 365 day operation. It is impacted by numerous circumstances out of its reach. Therefore, there has got to be a standard procedure used in the case of emergencies, not simply its the weekend and no one with authority is around.

Really pathetic on B6's fault. It will be interesting to see if the FAA lets B6 wiggle out of the fine.
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Old Oct 31, 2011, 11:47 am
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Originally Posted by Analise
So you don't hold BDL responsible at all for keeping a plane out there for 7 hours? I don't understand that. There was no way of knowing in advance that this October storm would hammer New England as it did. So why didn't BDL get buses to that plane SOONER if they refused to make gates available? Why did it take 7 hours for that to happen?
There is no one responsible party here; and please clarify if you mean BDL the airport authority (the city), or JetBlue station operations at BDL.

Typically, with a storm like this forecasted 28-24 hours out, aviation stakeholders rely on various weather forecasts to guage the severity of the storm, and use that as a tool to decide if full or partial operations are going to run.

What is obvious is this:

*Forecast models called for periods of accumulation, making transit and recovery difficult. These models were available 18-24 hours out, giving plenty of lead time to develope a game plan.
*The failure of the ILS at EWR exacerbated an already poor situation.
*The JetBlue station manager at BDL felt his staffing and facilities were adequate to handle both scheduled and unscheduled arrivals without additional need.
*Actual conditions exceed the forecast, forcing BDL into a situation it couldn't recover from a facilities and manpower perspective.
*Both the BDL airport authority and JetBlue over estimated the ability of their crews to accomodate unscheduled arrivals in such conditions.
*Failure of a good rapport between BDL and the tenant airlines to implement a weather recovery plan.
*Failure of JetBlue to establish a good rapport with its station management to implement a weather recovery plan.
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