ijgordon

Obviously lots and lots of delays going into NY tonight. Particularly frustrating because my sister was scheduled on a noonish flight from FLL into LGA, which was cancelled early this morning. Not sure why, the bad weather wasn't expected to hit here until much later. Anyway, earliest we could get her on was a 4:30pm from PBI to JFK.

So now it's after 9pm and the Flight Status on JetBlue.com is showing the flight with an estimated 8:15pm departure time. HELLO?!?! Word from the ground was that they were taxiing shortly before 9pm. Not sure if they took off yet.

Adding insult to injury, the email flight notifications don't seem to be working too well. I'm getting triplicates, and I received no updates for the past six hours while the fight kept getting pushed back later.

Is the JetBlue flight status/notification always such a disaster?

ijgordon

OK, it gets worse.

There is no SMS option for flight notification, and if I send it as an email to my cell phone the message is too long and is truncated, with zero useful information.

And I'm still getting 3 copies of every notification! And I don't have a texting plan!

caphis

The flight status shown on the website (and associated estimated time of departure) draws information from the same source that the crewmembers use, so it's usually pretty accurate.

The problem arises in situations where, like tonight, JFK goes through multiple Ground Delay Programs and Ground Stops in a short period. Each time Air Traffic Control revises a program, new clearance times are issued for each flight. It takes those revisions a while to propagate down to every system, from ATC down to the website's Flight Status program. This is made more challenging when you start introducing swaps, substitutions, and a Ground Delay turns into a Ground Stop (and vice versa).

The information is ever changing, and at any time, the Air Traffic Control tower may advise a pilot that he is cleared and must be at the end of the runway within x minutes. Or, Air Traffic can say "I know you were given an expected clearance time of xxxx, but after a revision, that slot is no longer available. Standby for an update in 45 minutes." And anything in between.

It's frustrating, yes, but unfortunately, you should still stay in the gate area. Not because the airlines enjoy watching you waste time, but because at absolutely any time, the flight may suddenly find an open slot and be cleared to go.

In the case of an early cancellation such as the FLL-LGA flight, operations tries to anticipate weather and traffic patterns and make adequate cancellations so that a minimum amount of disruption occurs when it does happen. As an overly simplified example, take 5 flights between XXX and YYY after 2pm, with YYY expected to enter a ground delay after 2pm. Each flight may be looking at a 90 minute delay, but if you can cancel one of them early enough, you've now got 4 flights looking at a 60 minute delay. If the loads are such that customers can be easily re-accommodated on the remaining flights, even better. The earlier such a change is made in the day when you know what's coming, the easier it is to find a solution that impacts fewer people.

I hope this helps in understanding the system a little bit, and I'm sorry that the weather caused the mess it did today. It's frustrating for everyone involved, for sure.

ETA:

While the Estimated Departure Times may be slow to update, the information is updated automatically when certain actual events propagate through the system. The Flight Status information has a few statuses to show (besides On Time, Delayed, and Cancelled):

Taxiing -- the aircraft has pushed back from the gate and is making its way to the runway
Departed -- the aircraft is in the air
Landed -- the aircraft has landed, and is making its way to the gate
Arrived -- the aircraft has parked at the gate

I'm not sure why you're getting the multiple email glitches, but I'd write in to the Speak Up area of the website so that it can be forwarded to IT for review. My best guess is that heavy demand on that program on the website, combined with the aforementioned constantly changing information provided to it, isn't sitting easy with the server, and it may be having hiccups.

karmasalad

The one time I had signed up for notification, I was also getting everything in three's. Three copies of txt msgs, three separate calls with the same notification recording. Needless to say, this was quite annoying and useless, so I no longer sign up for the notifications. I have mobile web on my phone, so I just go to jetBlue's mobile site to check my flight status now.

ijgordon

I understand the operational challenges these weather patterns can present. I don't understand why JetBlue's computer system can't stay up-to-date. I have plenty of experience with both AA and CO's notification systems, and they're much more real-time. It's like JetBlue is running their back end on a Commodore 64.

I have submitted several feedback comments on the JetBlue website - about both the multiple emails, lack of SMS support and the unreliable status information I described above. How good is JetBlue about listening and reacting to customer feedback?

caphis

The size and longevity of operation of AA and CO have probably allowed them to make enhancements to the system over time, if the discrepancy is that great. Or, they may have some other method of interfacing with ATC and among their various systems. I'm really not sure how better to explain it -- the process flow is as described, and if one part bottlenecks (either at the ATC source or somewhere along the way), glitches will pop up.

JetBlue isn't running on a Commodore 64, though. Most of the process is automated and near real-time, but if the system is constantly receiving updates and processing new data, it may take a short while to propagate fully. This happens daily on even the largest company servers, and in this case, relies heavily on ever-changing data from a third party.

Speak Up comments are categorized and forwarded to appropriate departments, and all comments are actually reviewed and actioned by a live human being. Airport comments are sent to station GMs, Inflight comments are sent to Inflight supervisors, website and technical problems are forwarded to IT, etc. In the case of IT-related feedback, it's been my experience that companies will often simply thank you for the feedback, and collect responses until enough information can be gathered to recreate the problem and debug it. Be as specific as you can be, though -- flights, days, your email provider -- any information you have. I, for example, have signed up for numerous alerts and haven't been able to duplicate the triple-email bug. Your case is different, and the more info you provide, the better.