GreenTrees

B6 unable to scale for the east coast weather issues? Phone system hangs up when you call... got a message before and it didn't even play out all the way. Friend is trying to get out but they won't give option to rebook for tomorrow w/o paying penalty. Who wants to hang at ORD on a 4 PM JFK flight that's now scheduled to leave at 7:45 PM--- and who knows how much longer the delay could exist? The flight that was supposed to depart at 11:55 (908) still hasn't left and it's now past 5:40 local time.

jetBlueNYFL

Why does JetBlue get the from you? If anything, the weather gets the

Today is a mess up in NY. I had 2 friends on MSY-JFK and PBI-EWR, both cancelled due to weather.

And it is NOT only JetBlue - all airlines are not doing so well in this mess today.

hobo13

I'm sorry to hear about your friend! I was supposed to be flying B6 today myself.... but never made it to my destination, which apparently was a good thing, considering that I would now be stuck there! (You can follow that saga in the other thread about East Coast cancellations.)

JetBlue, and their fans, will blame everything on weather. Yes, the weather sucks, but the big boys still get you there, or at least try.

jetBlueNYFL

You coulda fooled me... http://www.star-telegram.com/state_n...ry/746272.html (by the way, AA is the biggest of the big boys).

sbm12

Because their phone system won't handle the call volume and because the company won't allow a rebooking for tomorrow based on a 4+ hour delay. Those points were pretty clearly outlined in the OP.

This seems to be a familiar refrain - B6 doesn't handle IRROPs well. I'm very happy I wasn't flying today. I might be buying a walk-up ticket NYC-ATL tomorrow, and I'm hoping that the weather has passed through by then, but I put up with a 3+ hour delay on Thursday and managed to survive. Still, at that time my carrier gave me several options via a phone call that didn't get disconnected due to a system overload. I guess I just got lucky.

hobo13

Sure, all airlines suffer delays. And weather causes a lot of them. But there's a big difference between delays and cancellations, and there's an even bigger difference between cancellations on a route that AA/UA serve 5x per day, and route that B6 serves once per day. Those statistic do not account for this at all.

My quote said the 'big boys get you there' -- I never said anything about getting you there on time. When B6 cancels flights on routes served once per day, I would say that they have failed to get you there.

ty97

Frequency is not necessarily they key. If AA/UA serve a route 5/times a day, but all 5 flights are full, if one of them cancels, you still don't have a seat on one of the non-stops.

As has been discussed in the other thread, the difference for some other airlines is that they have multiple routing possiblities, so if you are going JFK-LGB, for example, they could re-route you through Chicago or Dallas. Jetblue does not have that.

jetBlueNYFL

Again, I'll echo the comment of others that pre-2/14 we had the highest completion factor (~99.8%), but low on-time performance. Now, we pre-cancel and still get slammed. Unfortunately, you can't have the best of both worlds.

Jerseyguy

This might explain the delays from FAA.gov
Due to WEATHER / THUNDERSTORMS, there is a Traffic Management Program in effect for traffic arriving John F Kennedy International Airport, New York, NY (JFK). This is causing some arriving flights to be delayed an average of 5 hours and 1 minute. To see if you may be affected, select your departure airport and check "Delays by Destination".

So you can't blame Jetblue that the plane was delayed for 4 hours, other flights were delayed as well, some of them for more than 5 hours. Plus, I'm sure if you had gone to the gate that the gate for flight 908 you could have been put on the standby list and maybe gotten out of there sooner.

ty97

The phone thing is bad. And B6 ain't great with IIROPs. But does any airline let you rebook fee-free at will just because of a delay? I mostly fly AA, I'm elite, and I think they'd laugh at me if I asked. But maybe I'd be surprised.

sbm12

The problem is more in the recovery than in the cancellations. JetBlue's recovery still lags behind other carriers and they suffer for it in passenger impact. We've heard over and over again that B6 wants the business passengers. But their operations don't seem to be bearing out that desire.

bmg42000

They need to upgrade the res infrascture in order to better handle these events. The need to interline with airlines like Frontier or Airtran so that they can handle these events better. I read on other forums that the big airlines also have trouble getting people to their destination .

ty97

Rather than conjecture, specific to the OPs routing of ORD-JFK, I decided to a do a little research on AA/UA (since they hub at ORD) to see (if Jetblue interlined) how things might have worked out.

AA: 3 flights
AA 4138 - Eagle Service scheduled to leave ORD 9:50am and arrive at 1:10p. Departed on time, but posts as 'in transit' with an estimated arrival of 3:32pm Not sure what happened to it (diversion?)
AA 1362 - Scheduled to depart ORD at 12:55pm. Actual departure 4:39pm. Scheduled arrival in JFK 4:15pm Actual Arrival 8:25pm
AA 2464 - Scheduled to leave ORD at 5pm and arrive JFK at 8:30pm. Left on time and arrived 15 minutes late

UA: does not fly ORD-JFK non-stop. Routes passengers through IAD. This is the status of the 5 United Express flights from IAD to JFK:
UA 7577: Scheduled departure 8:10am, actual departure 8:21am. Scheduled arrival 9:36am, actual arrival 9:42am.
UA 7578: Scheduled departure 12:25pm. Canceled.
US 7579: Scheduled departure 4:45pm. Canceled.
UA 7792: Scheduled departure 9:00pm, current estimated departure 10:33pm
UA 7581: Scheduled departure 10:05pm, canceled.


As generally agreed (I think), B6 could benefit from some interlining. However, as someone who mostly flies the 'big boys' for business travel (a lot), the assertions made about them in this thread are very "grass-is-greener-on-other-side" minded, and not the reality that I see in my travels (or in the stats).

-----
Edited after the fact for completeness. Adding Delta stats (I did not realize they flew the ORD/JFK route)

Delta Express, 4 flights:
DL 4160 Scheduled departure 7:00am, actual 6:55 am. Schedule arrival 10:30am, actual 10:10am.
DL 6172 Scheduled departure 11:40am, actual 7:15pm. Scheduled arrival 2:59pm. Current estimated arrival 10:29pm.
DL 6182 Scheduled departure 2:27pm. Canceled.
DL 6184 Scheduled departure 5:30pm. Current estimated departure 10:45pm.

magiciansampras

Yeah, but they'll answer the phone if you call.

hobo13

Just last weekend I was flying UA on BOS-DEN-BOS. The previous DEN-BOS on Sunday canceled on a day when most of the loads were showing Y7 or so on that route. I expected a bit of chaos at the gate (and maybe a bump fest!) but found no such thing. There were no throngs of people milling about the gate and eventually most stand-by's were boarded, though maybe not all. Apparently the excess capacity of the network was able to absorb a nearly full 757 on the penultimate flight of the day -- and on an O/D route no less (convince me that a flight getting in at 11PM local has people making connections!) So no, it's not a guaranteed seat on a non-stop, but it's a decent chance of getting you to your destination.

So it's partially about the hubs as you say, but also about frequency, and of course loads. JetBlue does have two east coast hubs (albeit with highly correlated weather) but often the way they schedule the flights (both leaving at the same time for instance) can preclude pax from rerouting via the other.