MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

The problem is that the pilot was getting nothing out of JetBlue operations. The B6 COO should have been informed as the three hour mark was approaching if B6 operations was getting nowhere with airport management in deplaning effots. The CT governor was on duty and ended up at the airport. At least the COO could have conferenced in with the governor to come up with a rescue strategy for the stranded a/c.

Instead, the story broke and it was another Jetblue incident. Now the Company is trying to do damage control instead of being out in front of this situation. Someone at B6 should be sent packing.

toomanybooks

After 2007, every employee of that bogus airline down to the cleaning ladies should have the CEO's personal cell phone number for such cases.

"Here is where you can reach me 24 hours a day if you have something that needs to be brought to my attention and your supervisor or some airport goofball is not taking care of it."

A semi-competent guy at the top of a company with that history would know this and have arranged for it years ago.

LarryJ

In the snow via stairs? I don't think so. Even if they could, 15 minutes per airplane with 26 airplanes is 6.5 hours. It was the number of airplanes, combined with the limited resources of a relatively small airport, that produced the long delay for the last few airplanes to be unloaded.

Because it wasn't obvious that BDL couldn't handle the diversions until the 26 airplanes had either landed, or committed to land, at BDL.

It wasn't only JetBlue. It was four airplanes, 3 JetBlue and 1 AAL. With 26 airplanes on the ground, and the jetbridges unusable due to the power outage, somebody has to go first and somebody has to go last. Last, in this case, where those 3 JetBlue and 1 AAL flight. The other 22 all had shorter delays.

jj1987

Remember also that JetBlue only "owns" 2 gates there, which had been in use by scheduled flights, and this was their third choice on where to land.

toomanybooks

I see. So you are saying that no one at all had a handle on the big picture here? 26 planes are heading in to a second-level airport in a big storm (or are already there) and NO ONE says, "Wait a minute, we got a problem here. Better send some of these guys elsewhere."? It all happens in 3 minutes?

Even I could have figured that situation out I bet.

In that case, conceivably, barely, possibly, JetBlue is not that much at fault. But I am quite skeptical.

In any case, you don't keep people on a plane for 7+ hours, especially if doing the same thing almost killed your company 4 years ago and you swore up and down it would not happen again and begged people to give you another chance. Figure something out. SOMETHING.

What a cluster.

precision80

What would have happened if one of the passengers called the police and said they were being held against their will?

"kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority."

jn in ca

Hi everyone. I feel a need (throw tomatoes at me) to clear up something.

It seems that everyone in this thread, whether defending Jetblue or throwing stones at them, thinks that the Jetblue planes sat there for 7 hours because they were at the end of some line of about 25 jets.

Reports I read today show 2 important points. 1) Jetblue diverted its other jets, besides these 6, to Atlantic City, where there were no problems.

2) The jet in question, the one that waited seven hours, was the first diverted jet to arrive, did not head for a gate, and requested to take on fuel.

I have never worked for an airline, but even I can figure this out: Jetblue left those passengers rotting on the 3 jets, figuring they had a fair shot at getting them in the air before the 3 hours were up. However, only after the 3 hours had passed did they make any effort whatsoever to develop a contingency. By then the airport was a mess, but the other airlines, who had acted responsibly, were already getting their passengers off.

At least, that's the way the flyersrights.org lady has been describing it in interviews.

Again, the AA jet is not a comparable situation at all. That was the fault of Customs, who refused to let the passengers from France get off the plane.

DL2SXM

its comical to read some of the excuses. No one is to blame but Jetblue. Plain and simple. Don't go blaming your problems and inadequecies on the airport authorities. 7 + hours on a plane is unfathomable. Jetblue shoud be a little proactive and cancel flights instead of trying to squeeze in every last flight of the day. Seriously, what a bunch of amatures. Hopefully they get fined the full amount for every passenger left stuck on a plane for over 3 hours. Then, and only then will they learn their lesson.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

Again, I bring it back to the point that at 2.5 hours operations at B6 should have known they had a brewing crisis on their hands. At that point the COO and/or the CEO should have got involved. The CT governor was on hand during the snow storm. The COO/CEO could have quickly gotten ahold of the governor and said look we have an a/c stranded at BDL for over three hours with no food and water and inoperable lavs. What do we need to do to get those paxs off the a/c and into a safer environment.

Its called crisis management and any airline, particularly the size of B6, should be able to practice it.

LarryJ

20/20 hindsight isn't particularly helpful at the time that the decisions are being made.

An airline can't send all of it's diversions to the same airport, there isn't room or resources. They have to spread them around. The initial plan was apparently to get them down, refuel, and depart before the worst part of the storm hit. They didn't make it in time. They didn't expect the power to be lost. They didn't expect computers and phones to go down. They didn't expect for their airplanes to get blocked in by other airliner's flights and low visibility. The forecasts available at the time the decisions were made indicated that they could get in, refuel, and get out.

The police would have investigated the call and talked to the airline representatives who would have explained what they were doing to get the airplanes unloaded and what problems they were having that were causing it to be delayed.

amejr999

B6 did cancel a bunch of flights-- in fact, after Valentine's Day, B6 really became the first major carrier to pre-cancel large blocks of flights in advance. They had some unexpected diversions due to the failure of the ILS at Newark, which resulted in the need to take rapid action to get planes on the ground (if you listen to some of the recordings from earlier in the day at BDL, there were a lot of low fuel calls across the board).

B6 certainly isn't trying to make excuses for themselves, and they've admitted that they've let people down. Personally, I'll wait for the report from the DOT before I start assigning blame.

OPNLguy

“You’re either with me, or against me”

“Only a Sith deals in absolutes”

To paraphrase those two bits of dialogue from Star Wars-III with respect to the jetBlue at BDL deal:

“You’re either with the mob who’s pissed at jetBlue, or you think a 7-hour ramp delay is acceptable”

“Only non-airline people embrace absolutes concerning areas where they have no actual practical or professional expertise”

In my previous posts, I’ve tried to make it abundantly clear that a 7-hour ramp delay is never fun, nor acceptable. I’ll be the first to concede that if I was stuck on an aircraft for more than an hour, I wouldn’t enjoy it either—but I would better understand it. That understanding tempers and otherwise mitigates the frustration and anger that such long delays can inevitably generate.

What I have tried to accomplish in my previous posts is to offer info on more of the behind-the-scenes stuff and other operational variables that are transparent to the public, in the hopes that some folks would “snap” to the fact that maybe, just maybe there’s a difference between informed opinion and uninformed opinion.

I think LarryJ has tried to accomplish much the same thing.

I’ve failed.

That doesn’t change the fact that whether one is talking about air travel in snowstorms, driving cross-town in snowstorms, or attempting any other kind of “normal” activity when “abnormal” conditions exist, sometimes it just comes down to a “feces occurs” situation, and (unfortunately) folks just have to deal with it. It doesn’t necessarily make the resultant situation easier or less delayed, but it is what it is, and I know the airline’s personnel are doing the best they can under the abnormal circumstances. Could it have been prevented? Maybe, maybe not.

Another mitigation (albeit a personal one), is if my travels are to/from anywhere with potentially delay-causing weather and ATC issues, I pack for an extra day or two. Being a diabetic, I also keep all my meds (and enough for extra days) in my carry-on (a briefcase which never gets checked as baggage), as well as any snacks I may need to keep my blood sugar from getting too low. Before my kids morphed into teenagers, my wife and I traveled with 2x the diapers, formula, and kids clothes we anticipated needing. More than once, we shared them with other passengers who hadn’t planned for the unknown. All of these preventative actions made delay situations much more tolerable and less-stressful.

Anyways, I’m now punching out of this thread. Good luck to all in your future travels.

P.S. If anyone thought that airlines were making lots of pre-emptive cancellations in anticipation of such bad condition before, watch those numbers spike even higher should DOT levy actual fines on jetBlue. No airline will want to risk the financial penalty from delays should Mother Nature later throw a curve.

Tailgater

Passengers should stop with the whining! All JetBlue should do is offer a bag of chips to the crybabies that had to wait on board for 7 hours at BDL. Passengers should just suck it up--pretend they're on a flight to Europe or somewhere.

Boraxo

Your insight as a pilot would be particularly helpful here. In particular I am curious about the following:

(1) What information was available at the time each of these planes took off? Was a blizzard forecast?

(2) At what point did Newark and JFK lose ground radar? What is SOP in such cases? Does the airline select which airport to divert? What was the weather forecast at that point (as opposed to hours ago)?

(3) How many planes from each carrier were affected? If B6 had 20 planes diverted, where did they all go? Who decided?

(4) When a plane lands, who directs it where to go? Is there no contingency for power failure? What if there was a medical emergency? I doubt they would pop the slides - more likely they would pull up stairs, no?

(5) Is there staff capable of moving the planes at the gate so others can pull up and use them? Can an airline use the gates of another carrier assuming they get permission? Are there interline agreements in the event of malfunctions?

LarryJ

I don't have access to the weather reports at the time of dispatch. I do know what the forecasts likely said and that would be to forecast wind direction and speed, visibility, obscuring phenomenon (i.e. snow, heavy snow, fog, etc.), and cloud cover and height. Might have been something like this: 36015KT 2SM SNFG 5OVC TEMPO 1/2SM +SN

Which means, winds from 360 degrees at 15 knots, visibility 2 satute miles in snow and fog, ceiling 500' overcast, temporary conditions visibility 1/2 mile in heavy snow.

That's not an unusual forecast for winter conditions. Airliners operate in those conditions all the time. There's nothing in there to indicate that the airport will be shut down, power knocked out, and aircraft stranded. Aviation isn't an exact science and no amount of regulation will make it so.

From what I understand, there were two failures. The glideslope antennas at EWR accumulated so much snow that they ceased to be reliable. That raised the required ceiling and visibility for landing significantly, preventing most of the inbound traffic from landing. The second failure, which I haven't heard any details about, involved the ATC radar. The radar outage would have reduced the efficiency of ATC routings as they would have had additional separation between flights and may not have been able to expedite traffic with direct routes and radar vectors. The degree of impact would depend on the degree of the failure. I don't yet have that information.

When you are about to land at your destination airport you are required to have enough fuel to fly an approach, miss that approach, fly to your filed alternate airport, and then fly for an additional 45 minutes. That's it. You usually have a litte more than that but not too much more. If you have enough fuel you'll hold and wait for conditions to improve or the glideslope problem to be fixed.

After the power failed at BDL, several other flights were still on their way there. They were diverted to BOS and 7 or 8 of them declared fuel emergencies and received expedited routing into BOS.

If you don't have much extra fuel your options are limited. You'll get updated weather at your filed alternate, and other possible alternates, and make a decision on where to go. This would have been complicated by the fact that it isn't just you diverting but all of the EWR inbound flights. You tell ATC where you want to go. If ATC can't accommodate that request then you negotiate something different. At this point you have no idea how many other airline flights are going to each alternate. All your dispatcher knows is how many flights your airline is sending to each city and he'll try to spread them around so as not to overwhelm any one station. Fuel reserves on each flight with me the major limiting factor.

Don't know. I've heard that there were 26 flights diverted to BDL. At least three of them were JetBlue and at least one was American.

They go where there is room for them. The company personnel at that airport tell them where to go, the pilots work with ATC to get there. In extreme cases, ATC ends up stacking them up on taxiways or even closed runways.

Sure, but there's only so much you can do.

When the power's out the jet bridges can't be moved, the computers don't work (the primary means of communications within the airline), the phones may not work, the fuel trucks can't refill at the fuel farm, and some of the ground support equipment (gate heat/air, gate power, etc.) doesn't work. Lights are out making it difficult to see what they're doing which is a safety issue on the ramp. In this case the FBO, which might have had stairs and ramp space, lost their radios and phones as well. Airline staff can't get to work so those there end up stuck (sometimes for 24 to 48 hours) and short staffed. Ground equipment is covered with snow/ice and won't start. Tugs don't have enough traction to push or pull anything heavy. Meanwhile, about 1,500 passengers are already stranded inside the terminal with no power and no computers to rebook them, book hotel rooms (which were also without power), or feed them.

The emergency personnel will do their best to get to and aid the sick passenger. If they can't get stairs they'll use a ladder to get in and lower them down on a gurney. They'll risk their own safety, as they do in adverse conditions everyday, to get the sick person the help that they need. They won't risk their own safety because passengers are uncomfortable, nor should they.

The gates are useless without power. You can't move them out of the way to push back the airplane that's already there then you can't move them up to, and adjust their height to match, the new airplane that taxis in.