Analise

Jetblue, AA....planes were stuck on the tarmac for HOURS on Saturday. BDL says it wasn't equipped to deplane AA because it was an international flight. So what about Jetblue? NO GATES AVAILABLE? They couldn't bring buses to get people off the plane for more than 7 hours???

Those of you whose base is BDL—how is this airport run? What is wrong with these airport employees?

All I'm hearing about is anger with Jetblue. What about Bradley Int'l Airport?

cordelli

It's a small airport, they sent 23 flights there on diversions pretty much all at once.

In a snow storm

With the power coming on and going off, so they could not get the jetways to work. Since the storm, through to now Windsor Locks has 100% (every single customer) without electricity. Yet they kept sending planes there.

They did not have the people to escort the people off the planes during the snow storm, they did not have customs to get the people off the CDG JFK flight off the plane (though I still don't get why they can't put them in a room instead of leaving them on the plane)

There's nothing wrong with Bradley on a day to day operation. It's when the FAA starts sending planes there without any consideration as to the conditions on the ground and the airport operations.

Really what on earth were they thinking, clearing a flight from Boston to Newark to take off only to have them divert to Hartford?

Analise

Ok....So the FAA sent these planes to BDL, an airport than can't even transfer people from plane to terminal in under 7 hours. So why isn't the FAA being blamed? Why isn't BDL taking responsibility as well? Why is the focus solely on Jetblue?

cordelli

They are not just focusing on JetBlue, both the DOT and the FAA will investigate their procedures (which is the real issue, the pilot can only do what they are told to do, it just happened to be a JetBlue plane this time)

U.S. officials are looking at JetBlue Flight 504 and “several other” flights in which passengers may have been stranded more than three hours, the Transportation Department said in a statement today. The Federal Aviation Administration said it is conducting a “comprehensive review” of how the air- traffic system responded to the inclement weather.

The Port Authority in New York has no problem blaming the FAA -

Some flights were diverted during the storm because of “intermittent problems with the FAA’s ground-based air traffic control systems” at New York’s Kennedy and New Jersey’s Newark Liberty airports, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a statement.


though having the pilot say on the radio to the tower and rebroadcast all over the news

“We can’t seem to get any help from our own company,” the pilot said in an air traffic control recording posted on LiveATC.net. “Is there any way you can get a tug and a towbar out to us and get us towed somewhere to a gate or something? I don’t care, take us anywhere.”


will make people assume the blame lies with JetBlue. The news doesn't report facts, they report for ratings. The JetBlue flight had several sports writers flying up for the Miami game, so they were able to call it in realtime with the right people and present just the one side. There will be plenty of blame to go around, most with the FAA but after tonight the story will go away and people will only remember it was a Jetblue flight.

Analise

Yup, that quote has been going around. But I'm wondering about the context of that statement. Was it that Jetblue couldn't get BDL to open some gates? Was it because Jetblue corporate had no control over how quickly BDL gets buses to Jetblue flights to get people to the terminals? I would have liked to have read what kind of help Jetblue's corporate couldn't get for its planes.

That is unfortunately all true.

reft

What has already been said upthread applies, but add in a blown weather forecast and current road conditions: It seems every 3rd road has a tree and/or power line laying on it. If you're lucky, there's one lane open, if not you reroute. Also, employees are probably dealing with their families w/o power, heat and other basics. (As I type this, it's on a laptop with about 33% battery power in a 48 degree room. Still waiting for Ready-Kilowatt to return after 48 hours of AWOL)

This is far from anyone's fault here. Multiple factors lead to a unique situation unlikely to be repeated.

baglab

I agree w/reft and cordelli. BDL is normally a wonderful airport... people come there to avoid NY and BOS. However, the snow came in earlier than expected ... and power went out for most of the northern tier. We are all trying to survive but there are issues with gasoline supply, food, power, etc. It looks like a war zone.

cordelli

CL&P said they expected to have full power restored to the airport and by 3 this afternoon, and they will not have to depend on the generators.

Not that it helps the weekend flights, but as the power was cutting in and out, the generators apparently did not function as expected.

There was also an expert on the radio this morning, missed who it was. He was explaining why part of the blame lies with the airlines. He did not say all the blame, he did not say how much. I am not saying I agree with him, just saying what he said.

He said that in the flights involved on Saturday, none of the pilots declared an emergency. Had the pilot declared an emergency, a totally different set of rules would have applied and the outcome would have been different.

Granted, one would assume that some point between landing and seven hours in a snowstorm with no food and water and bathrooms, somebody on the ground would have kicked it up a level even if the pilot never used the word emergency.

jpmcdonough

The AA flight was from Paris. When it was diverted to Hartford, which is supposed to be an international airport but where Customs/Immigration officials are not really required very often, it was held awaiting Customs inspection. The inspectors likely had to come from JFK and were stuck in the snow like everyone else.

All that AA might have done is send the plane someplace else, like Chicago, if they had enough fuel. But once you hear about a 'diversion' - all bets are off. They were totally taken by surprise.

I don't know anything about the Jet Blue flights.

P.S. BDL is not really that small!

cordelli

A few more details from Reuters

Flight 504, directed to a remote area of the airport on Saturday, could not access the terminal due to diverted planes that subsequently arrived and crowded the gate areas, Dervin (JetBlue spokeswoman) said.

"It got boxed in," Dervin said.

She said JetBlue flights were diverted because of navigation problems with airport navigation equipment in New York and New Jersey.

The Federal Aviation Administration, responsible for air traffic control, said in a statement it was looking into Northeast airline operations, diversions, procedures and airport equipment performance during the storm.

JetBlue said it could not say whether the decision to send certain flights to Hartford with the brunt of the storm heading for the region was incorrect.

Congestion, not weather, Dervin said, was the reason for problems at the airport where JetBlue planes are sometimes sent to refuel or wait, if there are delays in New York.

Other JetBlue flights were diverted to Atlantic City and Richmond, areas hit by the storm but not debilitated by it, Dervin said.

cordelli

A good read from the Wall Street Journal site today about the sequence of events that led to so many planes ending up at Bradley.

How Snow (and Libyan Soldiers) Led to Airport Logjams

If fills in some information (assuming it's all factual) as to what went wrong and why so many planes ended up there.

Analise

This article shows clearly that airports need to be held to the same financial penalties as the airlines for delays of more than 3 hours. What is it....$27,000 per person that Congress mandated to be charged solely to the airlines? Time for airports to be included in these penalties to give THEM incentive to get people off the planes. ^

PresRDC

I fail to see what BDL did wrong here. Seems to me like they did the best the could in light of the circumstances.

Any one who boarded a plane for a northeast destination that day was taking a serious chance of having this happen. The wise thing to do would have been to delay the trip for a day or so.

cordelli

I don't think there was much more they could have done given the current standards and practices. I think, or I hope, they will use it as a learning experience so that should something like this ever happen again they could maybe make things better, like getting the toilets cleaned and more food and water like Delta apparently managed to do.

I know there are people who believe the folks at Bradley should have had a plan in place for over two dozen planes being diverted from Newark and Kennedy without notice as a major storm rolled in early causing power outages and 1,500 people seeking shelter in their unheated terminal where the only food was what was left at a McDonalds in addition to those stuck on the planes, and international planes being diverted there they could not handle all in two hours.

The reality is I don't think any airport would have such a scenario in their disaster plans. If they did something like this in a movie, there would be threads about how impossible that would be to happen, how no airport would allow that, what a stupid movie, etc.

In the end, lets hope they learn enough to keep from repeating it, but it's pretty senseless to try and assign blame for something nobody could have predicted.

reft

If the article has correct information in it, then BOS should also be bearing the cost of some of the fine levied against BDL, not to mention New York area ATC.

Start fining the airports and the next time, BDL will just say "Sorry, send your plane somewhere else, not here" and then no one is a winner.

This was a corner case cause by a freak event that was outside of the control of most parties. It wasn't a chronic situation that no one was attempting to resolve that needed a trip behind the woodshed.

99.9% reliable systems cost a whole heck of a lot more than 99% systems and so on. Given the rarity of these events, it'd be more cost effective for the airport to just pay the fine each time, than perform the upgrades and maintain the new equipment to get another 9 on the uptime.

They didn't fine USAir or Sully for landing in the river (at least as far as I know) -- This case doesn't warrant fines either. Learn from it, and move on.