Originally Posted by
Flying Buccaneer
At least someone crossing the Pacific in coach is getting somewhere. These pax, just like a bunch of us last February, sat on JetBlue planes for over 8 hours, and went nowhere. Don't compare being stranded on a plane for 8 hours and going nowhere to spending 8 hours on a plane during an 8-hour journey that actually takes you to your destination.
To extend your very good point, spending 8 hours on a plane that is catered for 8 hours and on which you are expecting to spend 8 hours is very different from being stuck on a plane catered for a 1 hour flight. Many of us pack differently for a transoceanic flight than for a quick jaunt down the east coast (food, water, medication, clothing, etc.) And clearly the airlines pack more food and provision the plumbing for longer flights; it is not routine for toilets to overflow on long flights but quite routine to overflow in these ordeals. And then there's the lack of power/ventilation.
Comparisons between these ordeals and long flights are clearly irrelevant. They might be relevant in the case of stocked flights provisioned for a long flight that are catered during the delay and sent back to the gate after 8 hours, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.