ANY airport can be a real pain with winter snows ... but it seems JFK gets even worse in the winter!

I think some of the reasons include:

1. With so many international flights .. the planes need to land (or divert) .. that landing gets a priority.
2. Then with departing flights backed up and planes very heavy on fuel for long international flights... it gets even more difficult for a US-US flight .. i wonder if they get a lower priority that an international?
3. The weekends at JFK are especially horrible as JFK never seems to have enough crews on hand to clear runways and de-ice the planes.

I was stranded at JFK (ON THE PLANE) for over 5 hours one night ... the de-icing line was grid-locked with planes trying to taxi and get there and get to the runway. Then we needed more fuel so had to get out of de-ice line and go to a pad and wait for a fuel truck (the service people almost opened the cabin door without the slide being disarmed .. but the FA saw them standing there at the door). The back into de-ice line .. then into take-off line.

I think JFK gives priority to international flights (yes they should) but sometimes the place is just so so so grid locked .. that being #45 in line for departure sounds good!

Winter travel - blizzards and the associated problems!
Summer travel - thunder storms and the associated problems!

You kinda just gotta go with the flow and PRAY you are not going west to east following a major storm (did that once ORD-MSP with MSP getting bad snow .. then MSP-ORD the next day when ORD was getting the same storm . then ORD-HPN with HPN getting the same storm). A lot of thanks can go to the EXP desk in these cases for getting me on flights that went!