WillCAD

http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/p...rport/559828/1

Dang storm really put a hurt on the Northeastern US. Over 3 million without electrical power, roads blocked, schools closed, houses crushed by falling trees, flights cancelled, and this.

How is it that the whole country seemed so unprepared for this storm? I heard about it Friday morning and was prepared for anything from a light dusting to a 2' blizzard. It's not like it wasn't the top story on every media outlet in the storm's path for 48 hours prior to the first flake hitting the ground.

I'll be keeping a good thought for all of those who are currently in the cold and dark; I hope your power is restored quickly and your roads are open soon.

clacko

i wonder if there's an exception for this situation where the airport cant handle the emergency traffic....are the airlines still the bad guys?....

Boraxo

I for one am hoping that the FAA issues huge fines ($27,550 per passenger) to the responsible airlines. There is simply no excuse that is acceptable for not finding gates or alternatively to move airplanes from gates within a 7 hour timeframe, particularly during the daytime.

As for customs I doubt the Feds will get their act together because the attitude is "we are government we don't have to care" but maybe that will change if there is some Congressional heat.

jstevenson0617

Miami Dolphins beat writer, Andrew Carter, talks about his 7 hours on the tarmac on JetBlue #504.

Varjohaltia

I've checked out some of the reporting, including some other forums with airline staff offering opinions. This is still my personal, possibly misinformed opinion on the matter:

• The airport had no power / intermittent power (really? They don't have emergency power to move jetways and keep relatively normal operations? Why in the world not?)
• There were no movable stairs / using the stairs in the bad weather was unsafe / passengers didn't have the right clothing / there wasn't staff to escort passengers. Maybe I'm just old school, but even in a T-shirt I sure as heck would grab a blanket and happily walk through a snow storm to get out of being stuck on a plane. Obviously there were stairs, since that's what the fire truck used. And to me, common sense would say that you could walk a pile of passengers to the nearest door without worrying overmuch about one of them being a smuggler or terrorist, considering the circumstances. If there's a danger of slipping on the stairs, have a crew member escort every passenger down the stairs one by one. This, to me, is a silly excuse, even arguing liability.
• The airport didn't have the capacity / facilities / manpower / whatever. I completely fail to understand this either. They have rooms, heat, restrooms and a roof. That's better than the airplane, even if the terminal would only have room to sit on the floor.

Supposedly, I'm reading, the airline's supposed to show that they really did try to get the passengers off the plane in a timely fashion. Meaning that they are expected to drive support vehicles over from other airports, contract with whoever's available, have senior executives on the phone to call in favors and sort things out. If that kind of stuff didn't happen, and I can't believe it did since a ridiculously simple task of having passengers deplane didn't happen for seven hours, I fully support fining the airline, airport resource limits notwithstanding, and I hope that really is how the law views this.

WillCAD

I fully agree, though I think that the fine should be mitigated slightly by any circumstances that were genuinely beyond the airlines' control, such as the airport denying these planes access to gates. I also think they can be given a smaller fine if they made a good-faith effort to get the pax off.

I do understand the safety and liability issues with using portable stairs in a snowstorm; it's a dangerous condition, and I've also heard that using the rolling stairs in a non-emergency situation is prohibited by FAA regs, though I don't know if that's actually true.

Basically, I think the airports need to share some responsibility for these tarmac delays. It was a bad scene, man, a bad scene, but in this particular case it wasn't entirely the airlines' fault, since the planes were not loaded up and trying to take off, they had been diverted by weather and landed at the airport unexpectedly and were waiting for gates to deplane.

Still, 7-10 hours waiting for a gate to be cleared is exactly the type of situation that the 3-hour rule was put into place to prevent. I just hope the FAA has enough intestinal fortitude to actually implement the fines.

pittpanther

Be careful with your wording. My understanding is there were open gates - they were not allowed to use them.

adamak

I do hope JetBlue gets big fines. It's inhumane, dangerous and criminal to hold passengers for 7 hours inside a confined space. I also hope the airport gets fined too. There are too much finger pointing. Airline says airport won't let them dock. Airport says they don't have staff. And pilots / passengers got stuck in middle. Airport facilities are so full of crap. What would happen if someone just pull the emergency slide and start running out?

Analise

According to the media, Jetblue is evil incarnate. What about BDL's inability to get gates open AND to get buses to deplane these people for over 7 hours! What about the FAA diverting these flights to BDL in the first place? If BDL is as tiny as they claim to be, the FAA didn't KNOW that? But will the federal gov't really investigate itself?

If the airport "won't let them dock", the airport says they "don't have the staff", and the "pilots/passengers got stuck in the middle", why do you want Jetblue to get "big fines" given all you just said above?

This airport along with the FAA seem to be the main culprits here. The fines Congress passed for passengers being stuck on planes for over 3 hours should be paid by BDL and the FAA. Jetblue, AA and the other airlines that make up the 23 flights grounded at BDL (who are they) what did they do?

wrp96

There's plenty of blame to go around and yes, some of it might be excused, but not all of it.

JetBlue for at the very least not responding to it's own flight crews. Also, possibly for diverting flights to a station not prepared for as many flights as it received and/or prepared for an emergency situation. Didn't JetBlue learn anything from a few years ago?

To the airport, yes you were without power for at least some of the time, but step up to the plate and problem solve. Don't have enough airstairs or gates to go around? Too dangerous to use airstairs even if have them? Understandable in many situations. But at least find a way to get water/food to the passengers stuck on the planes. The airport had to know as soon as flights started diverting to there that there was going to be issues with gate space, and that it wasn't going to be going anyway any time soon.

From what I read, in the case of the AA flight, there was no one at customs to accept the plane and despite requests from the plane to at least let the passengers off the plane into a cordoned off lounge or gate area, they were refused. Guess the customs agents couldn't (or wouldn't) come back into work due to the weather. But there's got to be a better solution in an emergency situation than forcing passengers on international flights to sit on the plane until someone can get into work.

LarryJ

"The airport" doesn't operate the gates, airlines do. "The airport" doesn't have staff to operate gates.

The airlines are likely short-staffed as some employees will be stuck in the snow and unable to get to work. Equipment doesn't work right or doesn't start. Tugs don't have enough traction and must wait for shoveling/plowing. Power's out so computers and jetbridges don't work. The stair truck may be covered in snow and must be cleared. All of this with fewer employees on duty than you'd normally have to work 20+ fewer flights.

An airport the size of BDL doesn't have 25 stair trucks and 25 buses sitting around as they'd be unused 360+ days per year. They likely have one of each.

The airplane at the end of the line will have to wait for 20+ airplanes to be unloaded before it gets it's turn. Even if they can do 3 airplanes an hour (faster than SWA turns an airplane) it'll take over 7 hours. To unload 23 airplanes in 3 hours allows an average of less than 8 minutes per airplane.

cordelli

Hopefully they will consolidate all the different threads about it into one someplace. At last fix the thread title, it did not happen on Sunday the 30th but Saturday the 29th.

There will be no fines. Period. There have been no fines for any airline so far, and since the FAA lost their radar at Kennedy and Newark and sent the planes to Hartford where the generators were having some issues, they will not fine the airlines. They should fine the FAA for their inability to divert the planes (or in the case of the Boston to New York flight have it not leave Boston). The airlines went where they were sent. It's not their fault the FAA sent 23 planes pretty much at once into an airport with no power in the middle of a snowstorm. Really, how could it possibly turn out any better?

The storm probably had little to do with the American flight from Paris being delayed, it was exactly the same situation as the Virgin flight in June 2010 (when there was no snow) of diverting an international arriving flight to an airport that currently had no customs officers available. They did not learn from that mess, and they probably won't from this one either.

Could Bradley have handled it better? They already had 1,500 stranded people there, it was the middle of blizzard conditions, there was no electricity for miles and miles.

Hopefully eventually the FAA will just stop doing stupid things like this.

Boraxo

No hopefully the airlines will stop doing this once they are fined.

It is not the FAA's fault when airline execs decide to fly their birds directly into a blizzard - which doesn't magically appear out of nowhere.

If the plane cannot land it should not take off. Obviously this may not be practicable for some TATL flights of 8+ hours where conditions may appear okay at takeoff. But again, the airlines have had years to put together contingency plans, they damn well ought to have a plan in place that if weather (which appears on the satellite) is worse then expected then file a new flight plan to divert to an airport with a large customs operation and excess capacity such as IAD, not podunk BDL. And for flights up and down the east coast there is simply no excuse - the flight should be proactively cancelled. As previously discussed, that is the solution preferred by the vast majority of the flying public who would rather wait a few days to travel than risk being imprisoned on a place with no food, water or bathrooms for 7 hours. Certainly no parent with infants will choose to board if they were apprised of the facts.

Enough of the lame excuses. People want solutions. These are not unpredictable events such as earthquakes. Government and the airlines need to prepare for bad weather. If the FAA can't do its part then heads should roll as there are plenty of experts in private industry who work in contingency planning.

LarryJ

It is illegal for an airline flight to depart if the combination of current and forecast weather reports indicate that the weather will be below landing minimums at the estimated time of arrival.

alanh

The whole point of the fines is to overcome the "they'll charge us for the facilities so it's cheaper to keep the passengers imprisoned" mentality which comes into effect for a diverted flight. Really, the "you're not authorized" "I can't allow" "you may not" mentality needs to stop.