A roundabout flight for 405 on Monday
 

My wife was supposed to fly from BOS to LGB on flight 405 yesterday afternoon, and she called me as they were taxiing "in Long Beach", when I heard the pilot come on the PA to inform everyone that they were actually at the Ontario (CA) airport. Due to fog and fuel issues, and that they would soon figure out how/when they'd get to LGB. Which they hadn't informed the passengers of before landing.

I went to sleep after that, woke up this AM to a message from her that more than an hour later they were hoping to get to LAX, but that was also foggy, so she got off (carryons only) and was able to get a rental car to drive to Long Beach, where she was staying. I looked online and saw they eventually flew to Burbank airport, which is further from LGB than ONT is.

I guess B6 doesn't serve Ontario so they had to get the equipment some place? No idea what they did with the rest of the passengers.

(and for those who remember my last post earlier this year about her experiences on JetBlue, yes, stay off of flights that she is on without me. This is 2 in a row where the plane ended up in the wrong place).

fog in lgb
 

The flight from LAS to LGB got diverted to Burbank as well yesterday and the flight from JFK got diverted to LAX . I guess there was bad weather in LGB yesterday. (and the DL flight from SLC to LGB got delayed an hour and landed in LGB an hour late).

It was definitely foggy in LGB. I'm surprised they didn't make any announcement before landing of the diversion. My wife was lucky and got a car at Ontario (and Hertz waived the one-way fees!), but other folks on the plane were shut out of getting cars.

Don't know how JetBlue got the rest of the passengers to LGB, is there a way to find out without calling them?

Bur to LGB
 

My guess is they used a bus to get the passengers to LGB. That was has happened in the past.

Probably correct. Hope they got them there before the rental car counters closed!

A pilot's #1 duty is to safely fly the aircraft. Announcements are a second thought. Besides, until they land and talk to operations, the pilot nor flight attendants would have answers to the questions that passengers want to know (accommodations, time frames, etc).

I suppose on a wifi equipped plane you can make a reservation, but if you don't know if you're refueling and taking right back off, even that wouldn't really help.

While true, this didn't sound like a situation where the pilots where the pilots would have been so preoccupied that they couldn't take a moment to get on the PA and tell passengers they wouldn't be landing at LGB. This would allay concerns that passengers who know LGB well would have when they saw themselves landing at an airport that clearly isn't LGB. Is the plane being hijacked? Did the pilots land at the wrong airport, like happened to the Southwest plane in Branson earlier this year? I'm not saying these are rational concerns, but these are concerns that some passengers could have and pilots announcing they're going elsewhere would reassure them that a mistake or worse hadn't occured.

Agreed. And gives passengers a chance to call friends/family who are seeing on the JetBlue site that the flight to LGB is ontime and are planning to head to the airport to pick them up.

What would have changed if the passengers knew it was the correct or incorrect airport once you're safely on the ground?

I've heard that the range of an A320 is barely enough to make it cross country in good conditions. When the eastbound winds are stronger in the winter, sometimes JetBlue refuels in Salt Lake City if I'm not mistaken. It seems to me they did the right thing landing in Ontario rather than hope for good conditions in Long Beach and be wrong.

Update: Still no idea how the passengers ultimately got to LGB, I did notice that the return flight to BOS that night departed 4 hours late from Burbank, so I imagine they bused folks from BUR to LGB and from LGB to BUR. But today we got a "we're sorry" $50 credit e-mailed over from JetBlue. Considering their history, this was not unexpected, but if they hadn't done it, considering it was a weather issue, I would have had zero complaints.

I think it's very odd to mount such a strenuous defense of non-communication. I've never in my flying life landed at an unexpected destination without a pre-announcement -- it's a very unusual thing to happen -- and chances are all these passengers will remember about this flight, and JetBlue, is that they were taken to a strange place without being told what was happening. Public relations is not a flight crew's first job, but it's an important job.

I'm simply asking what would have changed. Typically when I complain about something I make an attempt to explain why it inconvenienced me and what could have been done to correct it. In this case, the lack of communication would be hard to explain if I were on the flight because I couldn't have done anything with the information had it been delivered 15 minutes earlier.

Get out ;) I don't think they stop for gas in SLC

They don't. The range of a fully loaded A320 is 3100 miles, 3300 miles if it's a newer plane with sharklets (JetBlue has both). It's 2600 miles in a straight line from BOS-LGB. 2800 miles in reality when taking into account air traffic routing. JetBlue's A320s are probably rarely fully loaded as they only seat 150 people (for now).