First time JetBlue passenger here, so forgive me if this has been discussed before. I'm trying to very quickly determine what to do. I'm booked Boston to Denver tomorrow night. Given the winter storm warning here in New England for tomorrow, I'm very worried about the flight tomorrow night. JetBlue is providing the option to switch to another flight up until the 21st (and Saturday's flight is available), which I am seriously contemplating. However, if by some miracle the flight is able to leave tomorrow, it would be great to get on it. I have been told that if I switch to Saturday's flight, there is no way to standby for tomorrow's flight without paying hefty change fees. If I don't change the flight to Saturday, I'm fearful that I could be stuck here for several days before finally getting out to Denver, which is pushing me more towards changing my flight. If I can change it and somehow get on tomorrow, I would do so without hesitation. I think I've answered my own question, but would welcome any input from others, particularly on the practical applications of their change rules during inclement weather.
BOS-DEN is usually one of the first to be cancelled it seems. Boston is suppose to get slammed with quite a bit of snow. I would attempt to get routed though JFK in the morning or something else like that. We only run the 1 BOS-DEN flight and a couple of other posters on here had a very poor experience trying to fly BOS-DEN on us.
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Unfortunately the early BOS-JFK-DEN flight is not available. So the only other option is 5:15pm BOS-JFK connecting to the 9:05PM departure from JFK-DEN. Not sure that really helps me all that much...
2 options, call Jetblue and get on tonights flight if you can make it or I would just book the early morning flight on Saturday, you'll get there only 12 hours late but atleast you'll be pretty sure your going.
Are you sure the weather will be over by Saturday night? B6 does not recover well from storms. I checked an UAL has flights from BOS to Den (change in IAD) for 359 on Saturday afternoon. AA has a flight from
BOS to DEN via RDU & DFW (I would avoid ORD (chicago also) ). Your best bet is to switch to B6 on Saturday night and then if the weather looks iffy for then try to get on AA or UA on Saturday morning . Good luck.
Not able to get out tonight due to work, unfortunately. I'm not at all confident that things will be better by Saturday (snow in the forecast through Monday), though I feel much better about trying to get on a non-stop from Boston Saturday evening than I do a connection through JFK early morning on Saturday. I also do not have any desire to get stuck at JFK for an extended period of time, so am very hesitant to take a connection. I guess the only question now is do I go ahead and make the switch to Saturday night now, or do I give it a shot tomorrow and hope that if it's cancelled I get seats on the Sat non-stop. Who knows... It's one of those scenarios where it's almost too hard to guess what's going to happen - I've flown through EWR on CO enough to know that you sometimes just have to take your chances and hope for the best.
Looking at the forecast and the warnings put out by NOAA, the bulk of the storm is supposed to be over by late Friday night into early Saturday morning. You might have luck getting Saturday. The company has already put out a warning to crewmembers about the impending weather and the possibility of cancellations.
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comments by JetBlueFA are his Opinions.
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TXNY, Thank you so much for being proactive in regards with the weather. My gut feeling is, if you can afford to wait, rebook until Saturday. It doesn't seem reasonable to put yourself through the wringer and then have all kind of problems by having your flight cancelled.
We, here at JetBlue, are bracing for the storm, and our goal is safety first. Thanks for your excellent questions. Good luck and let us know how this works out.
Last edited by flying4aliving; Dec 18, 08 at 6:28 pm.
Reason: spelling
Went ahead and re-booked for Saturday night - as the evening wore on, it looked like fewer and fewer seats were available for that flight, so I wanted to make sure I'd be able to get on it. I figure if there is a drastic change by tomorrow evening and the flight has a good shot of getting out, I can always show up at the airport and try to change back to the original flight (looks like a number of people may have already rebooked to other flights from that one, so I would doubt availability will be an issue). Should be interesting... Good luck to all.
411 BOS-SAN is canceled.
412 SAN-BOS is canceled as well (same aircraft)
so are these the only ones so far? Presumably it's for weather in Boston, but 497 to Seattle leaving just about the same time shows as "on time"... does the airline make decisions like "hmm, that one's really full, so if we can only get two planes out, let's make sure that's one of them", or is it just that it's going to be cancelled but somebody hasn't filled in the line of the spreadsheet to say so?
Looking at the forecast and the warnings put out by NOAA, the bulk of the storm is supposed to be over by late Friday night into early Saturday morning. You might have luck getting Saturday. The company has already put out a warning to crewmembers about the impending weather and the possibility of cancellations.
It will start snowing again on saturday evening. An additional 1-2 inches is forecasted. I better hope for the OP he/she is on an late afternoon plane.
As a side note: this storm could not have come on a worse day. Today and tomorrow will be the start of Xmass week! Lots of people flying out this weekend.
so are these the only ones so far? Presumably it's for weather in Boston, but 497 to Seattle leaving just about the same time shows as "on time"... does the airline make decisions like "hmm, that one's really full, so if we can only get two planes out, let's make sure that's one of them", or is it just that it's going to be cancelled but somebody hasn't filled in the line of the spreadsheet to say so?
Proactive flight cancellations have been ongoing since the early hours this morning. As of right now, 3:30 on the east coast, JFK is under a ground stop. EWR and LGA are under ground delays of up to 5 hours in some cases.
In regards to your second question, a number of factors come into play. If there's a ground delay, which flights can we shift around to minimize impact? Is there an aircraft available yet, or is there a huge string of delays upline? Is there a crew available? Is there availability to rebook customers if necessary? How are OAL doing?
Cancelling a flight is rarely an easy decision, but safety is paramount. We're at about 13% cancellations so far today, that number is subject to change based on how the weather goes.
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Well, we're booked on the nonstop from BOS-DEN tomorrow evening. It's a 7:55PM departure, and according to the latest forecasts, the weather should be relatively clear by then. The bigger issue is going to be aircraft availability. I am trying to remain optimistic, but this could turn into a nightmare. Looks like no availability on Sunday and Monday for the non-stop and tight for the connections through JFK. I'm already looking at options using miles on CO.