Originally Posted by
outer marker
While the fuel stops are a low probability event over the course of the whole year, they seem to be a high probability event when a weather pattern of high headwinds and poor Bay Area weather sets in. For example, the BOS-SJC flight #471 has been diverted 6 days in a row (to either DEN, SLC, or LAS). Even if you don't count the 27 hour journey on 1/7 when they were stranded in DEN for about 20 hours, the other 5 days had an average arrival time of almost 3 hours after scheduled (178 minutes according to flightaware).
Once the seat count increases to 162 it becomes a bigger risk if all seats are filled, especially on non-sharklet A320's if I correctly understand the excellent info from Aewanabe. It would be great if JB capped the sellable inventory well below 162 for westbound long transcons during months when headwinds are most likely to be high (to keep weight down), with perhaps more inventory added a few days out if amendable jet stream and destination weather becomes more probable. I somehow doubt that is likely.
This is my thought too. Throughout the course of the year it may end up as a reasonable percentage of diversions. But in the winter or over a week period with bad weather around the country the likelihood of a major delay skyrockets. There were diversions when the weather was perfectly fine in the bay area, so that's not it. Flying clear across the country in the winter, you are bound to encounter bad weather or have to reroute. How can I rely on an airline if there's a 50%+ chance of a major delay? BOS-SJC has diverted 7 of the past 10 flights.
I ended up finishing my trip to Boston, after switching my flight to the next night and flying out of SFO on an A321 instead of an A320. Good move too, because the BOS-SJC flight diverted again the next night (and again last night). If i wasn't as travel savy and did extra reserach/digging I would have had major disruption to my work and personal life without JetBlue doing anything to help.
The other thing that bothers me is how slow JetBlue is to update on the delays/diversions that it seems they fully know about. The past few days I've been watching the BOS-SJC flight and then the SJC-BOS redeye (BOS-SJC plane feeds the redeye). They'll update & delay the inbound, but not update the next flight. And when it does update, it's a completely unrealistic number. FlightAware will show the plane landing in SLC or DEN or somewhere to take on fuel, and also update the arrival time into SJC. The next SJC-BOS sometimes is updated to show it leaving exactly when the inbound plane is supposed to come in.