Thanks a330300, I just emailed a complaint to the DOT and got the same reply res1968 received. Apparently, the DOT is as slammed as "DearJetBlue" is.

WSJ Article
 

Read today's WS Journal and there is a statistics for everyone to see:

From/To NYC (EWR, LGA, JFK) airports between Feb 11-13:

Airline # of flights schedule % flown
==================================
JetBlue 790 65.6%
Continental 1,281 62.5%
US Airways 376 55.9%
Delta 814 52.0%
AA 995 48.2%
United 459 41.6%

Basically, what the numbers tell you is the different philosophy of the respective airlines. JetBlue and Continental prefer to fly:

AA and UA rather cancel early so passengers could make other plans (like go gamble with JetBlue or Continental) and not getting stranded at airports:

The problem is, if you gamble, be prepared to lose big. We were lucky nothing really bad happened Saturday night. SO what if you had to spend a night on the plane or at the airport. What if the skidding Turkish airliner had hit one of the plane waiting to take off from the same runway?!! Would it all have been worth it? Jetblue said they want to "fly as much as possible". Sound nice!!! The one question you all should really be asking is whether the decision to fly was really made in the interest of the customers, or in the interest of their profits.

Well, as someone who has a bit of experience with airline operations...

Whenever you have an event that severely disrupts your flight operations, one of your first concerns is making sure that aircraft are in position to operate TOMMORROW'S flights on time. You do what you can to position aircraft the night before.

During a thunderstorm, one thing my airline would do is carte blance cancel an ENTIRE bank of flights. An airline's outlook is always on their operational (schedule) integrity, and usually not any one specific flight. An airline bank of flights that operates out of synch does nothing but compound headaches for the rest of the day. By cancelling an entire bank of flights, you allow for your operations for the rest of the day to get back on track. But then, you cancel some flights that shouldn't have been cancelled, and you disrupted plans for those who could have gotten out.

So what do you do? Who wins? If they told me to rebook, I would have rebooked. Should they have taken ALL of the control away from the pax and cancelled every flight that day?

As far as the profits vs. pax's interests, I can all but guarantee you that they weren't making any money that day, and ATTEMPTING to operate the flight was done so in the interests of customer service. In fact, I bet it would have been cheaper to not operate that day at all. They knew they would have difficulties that day. They told their pax that they would have difficulties that day, and would rebook them for free. I agree that being couped up in an airliner for 8 hours sucks, but if somebody had to sit in an AIRPORT for 12 hours, my response was that you had fair warning, and any experienced traveller knows that if he is the last to rebook, he might have to wait a bit to get an open seat. In that case, it definitely pays to be the first in line.

Like a few other posters, you seem to be ignoring the fact that the issue here is NOT that JetBlue canceled flights. The issue is that JetBlue trapped hundreds of pax on four planes for hours (over eight hours, in the case of Flight 29). And in the case of Flight 29, JetBlue repeatedly told us that our flight would be on its way to TPA as soon as we were able to return to the gate, refuel, and get a new pilot. As someone who has a bit of experience with airline operations, you know that JetBlue didn't decide at 6:30 a.m. to cancel our flight so that the plane could be used for a JFK-LGB flight. That decision had been made earlier, probably hours earlier. Yet, we had been given no indication of that.

Being cooped up in an airplane for more than 8 hours might suck if you're going somewhere. However, it's unacceptable to hold pax on an airplane for over 8 hours, give them inadequate and inaccurate information about their flight, and then cancel their flight. Perhaps everyone on that flight should have rebooked on Friday or Saturday, but even so, that's no excuse for JetBlue to have treated those passengers they way they did. NW's experience in Detroit in 1999 and the procedural changes that resulted are evidence that airlines have a responsibility to their passengers, not just to transport them safely to their destinations, but also to treat them humanely. In the case of Flight 29, JetBlue did neither.

Why are well all beating a dead horse?

I think we all agree that what Flying Buccaneer and some of the other folks flying that day had an unreasonable, completely horrid experience on jetBlue on the night of the 2/13. I don't think anyone wants to dimish the experience each of them had.

From the other perspective, I think those flyers also understand that jetBlue did offer them the option of rebooking but they chose not to. I think what they're saying is if they had been notified ahead of time that they're flight would be cancelled then they would've been fine with that and made alternative plans. Their biggest gribe is not being told what was going on and spent all those hours at the aiport/airplane.

I think for future predicted large weather events, rather than just offering customers to rebook without change fees, they should consider e-mailing/faxing confirmed passengers that there is a signficiant risk of them experiencing something very unpleasent if they choose to travel on that day.

As far as the reason why they chose to operate that day if it's for profit, positioning or customer service it doesn't really matter does it? The fact of the matter is that did. If you appreciate that they tried, great... if you think they shouldn't have tried then book on a different airline in the future that doesn't try.

Let's all understand eachother's points and stop saying the same thing over and over again. May everyone have a more positive traveling experience in the future with whatever airline they fly on.

FB,

I worked at two different hubs for the same airline. "System" decisions, such as crew scheduling, aircraft routing, and flight cancellations were made within the dispatch department at our system headquarters. That headquarters was about six hundered miles away from one of our hubs, and about 2 miles away from the other hub. I never spent any time at our dispatch office. My time was spent at the station level (airport). I never knew when our dispatch department made the decisions they did; I only knew what we were told when they told us. It was also the station's job to update the CRS with the appropriate flight information -- the only inputs dispatch would actually make would be for a flight cancellation. However, based on some of the execution I've seen by our dispatch department, I was pretty sure they were about as behind on things at the system level as we were at the station level.

After rereading your original post, I agree with you that they didn't make that decision on the spur of the moment. However, I disagree that they probably made it hours earlier. They may very well had it in their minds as a Plan B for quite awhile. I'm also not aware of the TIMELINE of the conditions at JFK that day, so I have no idea what would have been a reasonable plan for the sequence of events for your flight. What I really would like to know is the details of the replacement pilot, and how readily available he really was at 0130. I understand why he needed to replace the pilot, though.

I can tell you that dispatch had no idea how long it would take for your flight to get back to the gate. Nobody knew. But until they knew for sure, there was absolutely no way they were going to make a PA about it. The only thing worse than no information is disinformation.

You're right, neither of us know for sure when the decision was made, but it was dishonest of JetBlue not to tell passengers until we had reached the gate that our plane was headed to Long Beach. They can argue that passengers would not have been able to do anything anyway if they had had the info. However, they owed it to passengers to let them know what their fate was going to be.

And I do understand why the pilot needed to be replaced. At some point during the morning, the FA's also would have needed to be replaced. I suspected all along that JetBlue had canceled the flight well before the flight returned to the gate, and jbernste's thread confirmed my suspicion that JetBlue was keeping accurate information from its passengers that night.

But the pilot did keep making announcements about how long it was going to take to return to the gate. At 1:30 a.m., he told us that there we needed to wait for a Cathay Pacific 747 to move before we could get out of the queue. That happened. Then at 2:40 a.m. he told us that the only thing holding us up was ground ops clearing a gate for us, and that that would take another hour. And an hour later, we were told it was going to be another hour. And so on, until flights actually started leaving at 6:00 a.m.

Well, as far as what to say to pax, a lot of my IRROPS information processed in the ops center goes like this: "Is the flight cancelled?" No. "When is it going to leave?" Who knows. I'm not convinced (not that I'm asking you to convince me because we both know there's no evidence) that B6 knew for certain what they were going to do with the plane until they told you. There's nothing worse than giving out mis-information. No information is bad enough, mis-information is even worse. As a paying pax these days, I'd rather an airline tell me what it's going to do, not tell me what it thinks it might do and change its plans 3x in the meantime.

I honestly don't believe half of what I hear from gate agents. Some of what they say, they say to get customers off of their backs. It's a tough job.

At 1:30am, when the decision was made to return to the gate, your pilot (and dispatch) had no idea it would take 5 hours to return to the gate. Your post was quite clear on the timeline. I also am reeeallll curious to know if there really was a "standby" pilot waiting for you at 1:30am. If there was not, then that is when the flight would have cancelled. If there was not, I'm wondering why the pilot told you there was, and if there really was a pilot available, I'm wondering what makes you think the decision to cancel was made at 1:30.

I agree that if they knew the flight was cancelled when they made the decision to return to the gate, they should have told you. In this day and age of cell phones, it gives plenty of time to rebook your tickets and contact the necessary people to tell them you won't be making it. I think part of your issue is what information was known to what people and at what time they knew it. My guess is very few people knew anything of any real substance, and that information wasn't really known until the last minute.

As a pilot, I was very interested to listen to the entire JFK ground control that was posted earlier in this forum. While B6 had several inexcusable customer service problems in the terminal during this time, as a pilot, I can say that B6 pilots were probably even more frustrated that the customers in the back. Several incidents happened on that ground that were of no fault to B6 pilots.

1. A Virgin Atlantic 747 took a wrong turn and ended up nose-to-nose on a taxiway. Big problem. Virgin pilots wouldn't tell the controller what they had done. He can't back up.
2. A 747 cargo plane was blocking the flow of traffic in an uncontrolled part of the ramp.
3. Medical emergency on a B6 plane
4. Several pilots were taking up unnecessary radio time griping about the situation
5. Tower admitted it was "understaffed" - JFK/FAA issue
6. Several planes had low-fuel emergencies and had to be pulled out of line to return to the gate
7. AF pilots were being annoying

I think there were a few more but this is all that I can remember.

Customer Service Lacking?
 

On a side note, I just heard the VP of Customer Service "resigned" last week amidst the meltdown at JFK.

In addition the VP of System Operations left JetBlue last quarter.

http://frontierairlines.mediaroom.co...=659&printable

All a coincidence with what happened at JFK during the snow - perhaps?

JetBlue to me, used to equal on time departures and honest customer service (along with low fares) - the fares are still decent, but customer service seems at a loss and on time flights, well the stats don't lie.

that sums it up very nicely

JB routinely does good by me.
Fees waived all the time..........rep even once said 'you sound like your under the weather, can i offer you the option to reschedule free of charge?'

You forgot the fact that there were other medical emergencies (on SU for example) and the fac that many taxiways were still covered with snow and the fact that only one runway was operating.

Those were reasons that our flight never took off. But none of them were reasons why we spent the last four hours of our eight-plus hours on canceled flight 29 trapped on the plane. That happened because JetBlue's ground operations didn't move any empty planes from the gates.

And if JetBlue didn't have sufficient ground ops staff to move those planes, someone has to ask why they would have tried to resume operations without them.

A bit late to the game, but I can offer the presective of a UA passenger on this weekend. For the record, I was originally scheduled on UA 645 EWR-ORD on 2/12/2006, a 12:45 PM departure. When I woke up on 2/12/2007 at 9 AM, my flight was already cancelled. A few minutes later I was rebooked into an E+ seat on the 2/13/06 8 AM flight, the first EWR-ORD flight (the regular 7 AM flight on 2/13/06 had been cancelled.)

UA did a great job. The storm was almost a non-event.