We delayed this flight for connections
 

Thought you'd like to see the world from a B6 crewmember point of view. We were leaving for PWM (Portland, Maine) and we were the last flight of the night. The Fort Meyers plane had 6 connnections on it and we took a 30 minute delay waiting for them. Our captain stood in front of our nearly full plane and explained to all the ontime and boarded passengers what we were going to do. Everyone onboard agreeded, if it was them, they would want us to hold the plane for them.

We simply couldn't leave 6 people in the airport overnight just because they had a GDP in effect that cause Fort Meyers to be late.

The Ft. Meyers plane pulls into the gate next to us. My Captain runs over to the plane to pull our passengers off and a family of four come running down our JetBridge, thanking us all the way. They were so nice when they came onboard and we were happy to see them.

The other two? Well they took their time, strolled of the Ft. Meyers plane LAST, strolled down our jetbridge, with our Captain hot on their tail. They never responded when we welcomed them onboard, took their time getting to their seats and getting settled. During the flight they were in my service section and told (not asked) me that they should have free drinks because of all we put them through!!! :mad:

This Thanksgiving I'm grateful that I'm not related to them. LOL

Happy Jetting

Would the scenario have been different if it was not the last flight of the night?

Good for you, flying4aliving. Presumably you would have left on time if you hadn't been the last flight of the day, but this was a fine pro-customer decision.

Now here's a story from the B6 passenger point of view.

We were up at PWM one afternoon a few months ago awaiting a hop to JFK. The incoming aircraft is on time, but goes mech at the PWM gate. The pax load is full of people making connections at JFK, some to other B6 flights, many to international; the excited couple next to us is heading for Perth, Australia, and quizzing us about how to locate QF at Kennedy.

Boarding, then departure time, comes and goes and the gate agents whisper among themselves but make no announcements. Meanwhile the last alternate flights of the day to JFK or LGA, operated by US, DL Connection, etc., board and leave. Only then do the agents inform the crowd that the flight will operate eight hours late and they will be getting to New York well after midnight. Dozens of connections are blown up. Vacations are wrecked right out of the gate. Because there are only two staff available to guide or rebook 100 customers, it takes hours to speak to a B6 employee. When we dial the toll-free number, it cites high volume and hangs up on us. The Perth couple goes home in tears.

This Thanksgiving I'm grateful I'm not counting on JetBlue to get me anywhere.

Get yourselves an interlining policy and train your out-station gate agents. You simply couldn't leave 6 people at JFK overnight because of an ops delay, but on that day at PWM, B6 destroyed trips for dozens of people because of nonexistent service recovery from a mech delay.

Happy jetting.

(begin ignorant comment) Some people just shouldn't be allowed to travel. (end ignorant comment)

If they were changing to an international flight at JFK then they were traveling on two tickets. Sorry but that's the risk you take when you buy two different tickets.

As an LCC JetBlue doesn't have an interlining policy. You take the risk of service interuptions when you buy a ticket on them; mechanical delays happen. Service recovery from a mechanical delay on JetBlue is flying later when the plane is ready to go.

The crying Perth couple have no one to blame but themselves. They gambled (most likely for a cheaper ticket from PWM to JFK) and lost.

Thanks for acknowledging that there is such a risk when flying JetBlue.

And what is the payoff for taking this risk?

JetBlue's coach is superior to any other carrier's coach product, provided that the flight is on time. That's the payoff. If you bring a good book with you and if arrival time is not critical, you will have an excellent trip.

That's what I thought. :)

Compare JetBlue fares to the legacies. It costs as much or more to fly JetBlue. If you're flying Allegiant, I think your point stands. If you're paying more than DL or UA charge to fly JetBlue, I think coherent service recovery should not be absent from the proposition.

Ah, the time-honored blame-the-customer line. You'll fit right in here on FT. ;) My point was that if B6 had an interlining agreement those folks would have made their flight. Heck, if the PWM gate agents had made a timely announcement, they could have walked down the concourse to DL, bought walk-up tickets, and gotten to JFK in time. It was needless (but typical) B6 inflexibility and paralysis in the face of irrops that ruined dozens of itineraries.

As long as your definition of "excellent" covers "possibly getting to your destination hours or days late." I agree B6 has the best Y product in the US, but when it comes to ops reliability and service recovery, there is a picture of a JetBlue tail in the dictionary under the entry for "crapshoot."

I did not come here to rain on flying4aliving's fine story. I do contend that B6 is not an airline to be relied on, day in, day out.

Yes, if you travel internationally on two separate tickets and it doesn't work out, then you deserve to be blamed.

This assumes a few things:

(1) B6 knew about the delay early enough to have interlined people to other carriers. It frequently happens that mx delays look like a quick fix and its not until they start working on it that they realize how bad it is.
(2) There was room on the DL flight for everyone who needed to switch for connections.
(3) A legacy with interlining agreements would have handled it any better.

To illustrate (3), here's three stories that have happened to me recently:

*QF delays JFK-LAX-SYD flight by 24 hours but doesn't announce the delay until after the AA/UA LAX flights have left. No one can switch to another flight that would get them to LAX in time for another QF flight to SYD/MEL/BNE.
*MH delays KUL-LHR flight by 16 hours as part of my KUL-LHR-JFK itinerary. Delay not announced until after all eastbound options (ex. KUL-SIN-EWR) have left leaving no choice but to take the 16 hour delay.
*DL delays ATL-ORD flight by two hours causing me to miss a connection to MKE on UA (last flight of the day) but agent refuses to reroute on another carrier.

I actually do rely on B6 to get me to BUF from JFK week in and week out. I used to fly US but they are less reliable on the route than B6 (74% on-time for US vs. 84% on-time for B6).

I find it laughable that some think that it's a guarantee you will be delayed on JetBlue. From the October figures (most recent time period available/reported), it seems to be the contrary. Straight from the PR...

JetBlue's preliminary completion factor was 99.7 percent, and its on-time (1) performance was 86.8 percent.

(1) The U.S. Department of Transportation considers on-time arrivals
to be those domestic flights arriving within 14 minutes of schedule.

So, let's see...

Three-Tenths of JetBlue flights did not operate in the month. Additionally, a mere 13.2 percent of flights did not arrive on time. And that's considering ALL flights arriving in excess of 14 minutes late. 86.8% OTP is great, but consider the many flights that are only 20 minutes or 25 minutes late!

Good for you. After the year we've had with irrops and B6, my wife refuses to even consider JetBlue for family travel, which makes things difficult because I cannot consider JetBlue for time-critical business travel. As nsx says, JetBlue may work for you "if you bring a good book with you and if arrival time is not critical." I have no business trips where it's OK to arrive 12 to 24 hours later than planned.

I'm pleased you're happy with JetBlue, although I disagree with your implication that when things go south, it's the customer that's generally at fault for daring to believe the timetable, the "bringing humanity back to air travel" stuff, etc. My only contention is that inventive, sensitive, pro-customer service recovery is absent from the JetBlue experience... and the anecdote that led off this thread is unusual.

The data is clear that JetBlue's incidence of delay is on a par with other carriers. So you have a very good chance of having an on-time flight.

However when a delay occurs it is likely to be longer, due to JetBlue's relatively thin route structure and routing through JFK. A prudent traveler will prepare for this possibility.

That's the long and the short of it.

BTS data is only available for September (October performance was better), but that data shows, of late flights, the average arrival delay:

FL: 40.49
WN: 42.31
DL: 42.63
US: 44.60
NW: 51.09
AA: 53.42
UA: 54.00
CO: 57.23
B6: 60.94

So in September, B6 was about 10 minutes over the average for these carriers, but not an outlier by any means. October data should be better, when it's up.

So, given that overall OTP for B6 is on par with other carriers, and when a flight IS delayed, it's about 10 minutes over what you'd expect on another carrier, I really don't see what all the bruhaha is about.

The bruhaha is not about what happens when things go okay. As you point out, B6 is on-time as much as everyone else.

As posted above, it's that when there is a delay, it's on average the worst of the majors, and when you run a thin route network and won't interline your pax, things go downhill much faster for them.