Booking nightmare
 

So I just booked flights from BOS to ACK and back and either I made a mistake or there’s something up with the website. Anyway I got the outbound day wrong and am trying to change it online. The issue I have is that when going into Change Flights. If I don’t select the return to change, it is showing me the wrong day (out by a month) for the return flight. So for example

My outward flight is is currently 20/08 and I need it to be 21/08. The return on 04/09 is fine and doesn’t need changing. On the change flights screen though it is showing the return as 04/10. If I opt not to change the return this shows on the choose your flights as 04/10. If I change it on the Change Flights screen to the correct day it offers me the Current Flight and I can’t select that one. As I can’t select that I can’t continue.

I’ve got a callback from B6 pending but does anyone have any ideas as to a way round this?

Cancel and rebook?

JetBlue's IT is incredibly bad; their web site is truly terrible. It would not surprise me if it can't handle the European date format; you might try changing the date format on your browser to American dates and see whether that works.

Eventually spoke to a lovely lady from B6 who sorted everything out. First class customer service, she was brilliant. Thank you for all the suggestions though much appreciated. Yes the website is appalling, it makes the BA one look like it’s perfect in comparison.

So arrive at BOS having left home in London at 5:30am BST and flown BA across the pond. Have a lot of time before the 18:30 B6 flight down to ACK (Nantucket) so bag dropped my hold bag and then after a short walk around, went through security to the departure gates. Had a long wait so watched a film on my laptop and a BWI flight leave from the same gate. As we approached departure time there wasn’t a plane at the gate. Screen changes to say there will be a delay gate agent informs us the plane hasn’t left LGA yet. Then the delay just increases to the point that we could have flown there and back several times. Eventually at around 20:00 a plane turns up to the relief of everyone.

They start unloading that and we’re excited to finally look like we’re going somewhere. The pilot appeared and had a chat with the gate agent which we couldn’t hear what they were saying. However I got a message at the same time from family on the island to say that there’s fog. So I assume that we might not leave and then the gate agent is on the tannoy telling us that the Pilot is looking for a different route down to the island and discussing this with ATC. Then eventually the flight is cancelled and we’re told to head out to the counters landslide for rebooking. When I eventually got to a desk the bloke tells asks me if I’m having a good day to which I tell him it’s now been over 20hrs since I woke up and I would like to go to bed. He tells me that I’m booked on the earliest LGA flight at 6am with a connection there to ACK later on. I said no thank you, to his obvious surprise. I explained that there was every chance I wouldn’t wake up to be back at the airport for that flight. He said he’d look into other options and I said please don’t fly me to another state where if the fog persists I will be stuck there with no options. At least at BOS I have the chance to get the bus and then the ferry which I won’t from LGA.

Books me on the same flight next day and when I asked about a hotel room he said there’s a Hilton at the airport. By this point I was almost asleep on my feet. Why aren’t you offering rooms I ask to be told it was a weather delay, it’s foggy on Nantucket that’s why your flight is cancelled. They don’t offer rooms for weather delays, sorry about that and then he repeated the fact there’s a Hilton at the airport. Demoralised I walked to the Hilton to be told there’s no rooms they’re full. The concierge though is excellent and offers to call around and finds myself and two other people from the flight rooms at another hotel. Gives us a bottle of water each and arranges a shuttle to get us there with a few jokes to keep our spirits up. When we arrive it’s $229 dollars a room which is a bit steep for the room I got but too tired to care.

Next morning I looked at the flights into ACK and if we had left on time we would have arrived with no fog. Cape Air 9K were still flying their 10 seat Cessnas at that time with no problems. I spoke to a supervisor back at BOS who is sympathetic but adamant they’re not going to be paying for my hotel room. She agrees that I have a good point about the delay causing the weather to cancel the flight. She says that the agent couldn’t have done anything last night even if he’d called a supervisor then. As a goodwill gesture though she’s going to put the cost of the hotel into my travel bank for future travel. That’s all she has the authority to do so, I accept that and call it quits. I’ll have to see if my insurance will pay out.

However whilst waiting at the gate for the flight later that day B6 have another late arrival into BOS at the next door gate. Instead of making these people wait though they just tell them to switch gates and another plane will take them to BWI (I think). I overheard someone asking where the other plane was supposedly going before switching to take them and what about those passengers? The response was not to worry they’re going to be accommodated on the late incoming plane to that gate. Obviously ACK isn’t a priority for B6 as we weren’t offered another plane the day before.

Sorry to hear it. I was actually surprised to hear B6 has a "mainline" BOS-ACK flight. They've typically worked with Cape Air on connections (not sure if it's a true code share). If you encounter trouble on the return you may consider asking for a shift to Cape Air should you be pressed for time on a connection.

It’s one flight a day and I picked the B6 flight because they fly bigger planes than Cape and I assumed more reliable service. It was also $500 cheaper which was a serious consideration. I was just exhausted after a very long day.

It just added insult to injury they had a delay on an incoming flight the next day whilst I was waiting for the flight down to the island. Telling those passengers to switch to a different gate where they would board a different plane that was ready to fly was a bit galling. Obviously Nantucket flights aren’t considered important enough for that treatment. It’s not like fog is a major surprise on Nantucket, there are “Fog Happens” bumper stickers and t-shirts you can buy. I doubt B6 operations are aware of the local conditions and know that the earlier you get that Nantucket flight out the better to avoid the fog.