Can someone enlighten me as to why JetBlue (and others in the same pickle) couldn't move planes away from gates once they'd been off-loaded so that planes trapped on taxiways could be moved in and emptied? There's something I clearly don't understand about ground control, etc.

Because they didn't want to. There's nothing preventing them from returning planes to the gate and letting people off.

The stories say that jetBlue goes to unusual lengths to try to get their flights off. I suspect that it's due to their point-to-point (i.e., non-hub-and-spoke) route system. One flight gets cancelled and all of that plane's subsequent flights are also cancelled. Put that together with not having interline agreements to put passengers onto other airlines and you have a lot of dissatisfied customers.

EricH is absolutely correct. Jetblue (B6) and Continental have different philosophy than the most other US domestic airlines when it comes to canceling flights. These two will try to get flights out, even if significantly delayed. Southwest, to a lessor extent, as well.

But clearly, B6 is not equipped to, or prepared for, handling situations like last week. It totally exposed its problems. The storm at JFK was no where as bad as Northwest had at DTW and MSP in 1999. And other airline was back running soon last week, including Continental at EWR.

They also didn't have a "rescue" strategy to put things back together. That's why they cancelled so many flights Thursday to yesterday, just to sort things out. It's so amateurish.

I just read their "passenger bill of rights" and one of the provisions is to not hold passengers on a plane for more than FIVE HOURS. They've got to be kidding. Sitting on a plane going nowhere for an hour is bad enough.

Sitting on a plane for 5 hours on the tarmac <b>and</b> getting to your destination is a lot more better than spending many more hours in an airport terminal - either standing in line to wait to be rebooked by an overworked agent, or sleeping on the floor.

Does anyone know if the Directv worked on the Jet Blue planes while they were waiting? Often, the entertainment doesn't come on until after take-off and is stopped before landing.

Perhaps Jet Blue should add that they will bring along a 10-hour movie in their &quot;passenger bill of rights,&quot; just for situations like this.

They were not working. One comment on Flyertalk's Jetblue board was pretty funny. It says something like: <i>&quot;Those poor people can't even see themselves on CNN.&quot; </i>

This is a taxi diagram for JFK:

http://tinyurl.com/38ojzx

The grey areas constitute the ramp (I grit my teeth when I hear &quot;tarmac,&quot; because tar-macadam is a paving compound, not a surface area). Where do you expect the ground controller to put the airplanes that you want pushed back in order to make room for others at the gate? I'm repeating myself, but an airliner takes up a lot of room...those wings stick wa-a-a-y out there...an no one wants to swap paint or have a fender-bender. Every &quot;parked&quot; airplane would impede movement for others. There are no easy solutions.

JFK has all the stairs and buses to take people off the planes. Jetblue didn't start asking until around 3pm; and passengers were eventually let off that way.

So, those are two different issues.

Once again I am limited by my lack of knowledge about the conditions on the ground at JFK on that day. Would it have been possible to push/drive airstairs into position? Wind? Snow? Ice? Nice that they were available, but were they usable?.

Sorry to make you grit your teeth, Bobmrg. Asking a question without using preferred terminology is <i>so</i> presumptuous.

Now: if you have full Planes A and B on the RAMP and arriving (or failing-to-depart) Plane C at the gate, once C is empty, it can change places sequentially with A and then B so humans can be inside, where food and warmth and bathrooms and liquids are, and empty planes can go where full planes once were.

I don't disagree that there are a finite number of spaces for planes on ramps and at gates, but the passengers are not bolted into the plane cabin and should be able to be off-loaded sooner than 10 hrs. after either push-back or landing. It may be a &quot;Chinese checkers&quot; sort of puzzle to move them around but it should be doable (and apparently some airlines did solve the puzzle).

With all due respect to the little gray area on the diagram, JFK is a huge airport complex. The notion that 3 airplanes parked on the tarmac, wait, I should call it the ramp to be pc, will congest the airport is just not correct. There are plenty of areas where they could park, bring in buses, etc.

B6 doesn't fly 747 or A340s - they could easily stack a couple of their planes in a row and get the passengers off.

The idea that there are no easy solutions, so nobody even tries to find any solution is just poor business practice. JetBlue experienced an operational meltdown plain and simple.

Situation at JFK wasn't that bad last Wednesday. It's nothing like MSP and DTW in 1999 when NW stranded many planes.

The stairs and buses are available, but Jetblue didn't ask until 3pm.

There are also other gates at JFK open that can be used, but there's no contingency plan between B6 and Port Authority or the other airlines for them to use those gates.

That's what I get from relying on hysterical cable news channels.