Originally Posted by
lewisc
The family was sort of wronged. Whoever gave, or sold them, the buddy passes didn't adequately explain the issues. Six nights in the airport. Maybe someone from JetBlue could have checked bookings and politely told the family the chance of anything opening up prior to Monday was zero. I clicked on the article. A poster said this is the hardest flight to use a buddy pass. One flight a day. There are sometimes 40 passengers on the standby list. It sounds like it was possible they wouldn't be able to use their buddy passes for weeks.
The only reason the family got home is a person bought them tickets on United.
Maybe JetBlue could have politely told them there won't be tickets available for them any time in the foreseeable future. A busy restaurant tells would be customers they are fully booked and aren't accepting any walk ups.
The person who gave them the tickets should have done some homework. Told them the passes wouldn't work for them.
It's easy to blame the parents. Sounds like they don't fly much. Sounds like they had no idea about possible issues. I'll sort of disagree with the previous posters, I'll give most of the blame to the person who gave them passes.
Yes, I'll give you the point that the person who provided the passes should have also imparted some knowledge on the family (or not given them passes that they could have guessed would be this difficult to use).
However, I find it hard to side with a parent who would let their 4 year old child get hungry to the point of needing paramedics called to the airport simply because they didn't want to leave the airport for fear of missing a once-a-day flight.
I understand they wanted to get home, airport food is expensive/nasty, and money is tight. But if it's a matter of my kid not being able to bathe, sleep, or eat enough to stay upright, the level to which I care about drilling up a credit card balance, overdrafting a bank account, or almost anything else is relatively inconsequential.