What's really hard is when you have no staff to communicate to passengers what the heck is up. None. No one. This is why the pilot needs to take charge, since no one else will.
The same flight crew didn't fly back to Boston as far as I can tell.
It's a no win situation all around.
Originally Posted by
fly18725
Crew rest is federally regulated and contractually mandated. If the pilots and flight attendants stayed in the airport, it is possible that the passengers would have been stuck in BUF for even longer.
Returning to BOS was inconvenient but provided everyone with more options. There are additional crews and aircraft that could be used to operate a flight to LAX. There is also AS (contracted) staff that should be able to help. It's also possible that there were BOS-originating passengers that would prefer to cancel their trip and go home.
There were no departures from BUF between the arrival of the flight and the departure of the new aircraft to BOS. I'm sure AS was looking at reaccomodations, but it is hard when there's no flights.
The only option would be to rebook passengers on another flight the next day. It's unlikely that'd get them to LAX any faster than re-routing through BOS (excluding the 90 minute ground delay, which was inexcusible).