Originally Posted by
jordyn
Sorry to take OP's thread off track, but
Widgets's typical FlyerTalk absolution of the airline bugged me, so I went back to the LiveATC feed to confirm, and indeed at about
6:06 in the feed the pilot clearly announces to ATC that, despite being cleared in to land on 4R, "company just ordered us to divert to Boston". It's not even like Delta was particularly badly affected by Sunday's chaos--Terminals 1 and 8 were shut down, but 2 and 4 seemed unaffected other than the general ground stop that was in place for a while.
I'm giving Delta a try on the theory that their operations are better than AA's, and I suppose I'm just unlucky because in addition to Sunday's debacle there's been minor problems leading to delays with two other flights as well. I'll hope that my experiences revert to the mean before too long, and see if Delta does anything other than the e-mail they sent Sunday night blaming the diversion on "security concerns".
Terminal 2 was also shut down by the PANYNJ...all operations were consolidated in T4 for the night. Due to the gating issues from this move, some flights were diverted and others were cancelled. There were already gating issues due to the thunderstorms earlier in the day, so the security shutdown added further strain to the limited gate capacity. Instead of landing aircraft and having them hold on a taxiway at JFK until a gate opened, diversions were chosen instead (along with downline cancellations).