Jet Blue - would you fly with them?
 

Well after seeing the news reports on Jet Blue, I can't imagine flying with them. I am the cheapest person alive and will go to almost any length for a low fare, but I would have been arrested by the air marshalls if they had tried to keep me on a plane for 11 hours and allowed air in every 20 minutes by opening the hatch! At least if I totally freaked out they would have had to sedate me:-)

Yes if I was going someplace that they fly...I flew with them once and loved their comfy seats and the tvs. And their prices can be great. That was an isolated thing and could probably happen with any airline.

Yes. This can and has happened on other airlines.

We flew with Jet Blue last year and it was as good as a flight could be. Plus, they offer a little t.v in the seat back so you can watch a selection of shows

I love JetBlue. I'll fly them anytime (it helps that their West Coast Focus City is my home airport-- five minutes from my house).

I don't condone what happened on that plane. However, between the airport trying to stay open and the airline telling the pilots to keep the plane ready to take off at any time just in case they get the go-ahead, I'm not surprised. They do need to review those policies.

I love JetBlue, my favorite airline by far, and fly with them monthly out of both JFK & LGA.

What happened yesterday has happened to many airlines (Northwest, Detroit).

It's a Catch-22 for airlines -- cancel flights early and people get mad, don't cancel & get caught on tarmac, and people get mad.

Donna, you do realize, don't you, that not everybody reading this thread is fully aware of "the news reports" of what apparently happened yesterday?

Yesterday's "ground hold" for 8 or so hours was ludicrous but jetBlue is hardly the only airline to have been guilty of this. Northwest did it several times a few winters ago and this partially led to the "Passenger Bill of Rights" passed by Congress. If you pass on jetBlue because of this, it's your loss. They are really a good airline. I rarely fly them because, just as with Southwest, the "low-cost" carriers rarely have the lowest fares. Southwest and jetBlue often cost more than American or Continental, at least from my home airport.

Jetblue and Continental has for years shown to be most aggressive to put flights out in bad weather. You can see that they have the least cancellation rate of the major US carriers.

This policy has its advantage and disadvantage. Many people will rather sit in a plane for 1-2 hours on the tarmac to get to their destination, rather than fighting for a motel room, or sleep on the floor of an airport.

But this of course has a risk. Continental so far hasn't stranded passengers in snowstorms last year and this year at EWR; while this is already <b>the second time</b> for Jetblue in 2 years. During last year's snowstorm in February (or March?), at least one Jetblue flight has stranded passengers for hours.

It didn't get much publicity like AA's incident at AUS. Don't know why, some say it's because they are the darling of NYC's media. Maybe true, maybe not.

But as it showed yesterday, they haven't learned from their own mistake or AA. And I guess they can say that they weren't around during NW's fiasco that they can't have learned from that one.

I would fly Jet Blue because this situation is not unique to them.

Recently, various carriers headed for Houston were diverted to San Antonio because of weather--passengers were not permitted to deplane and were stuck on board for at least 8 hours.

A few weeks ago, an American Airlines plane headed for Dallas was diverted to Austin...passengers whose final destination was Austin were permitted to deplane after waiting 4 or 5 hours on the plane.

And though I'm sketchy on the details I remember reading another horror story of an international flight making its way to the States only to be diverted to an airport not capable of handling international passengers so they, after flying however many hours, were also stuck. I would go insane.

It happens, more often that it's fully reported to the masses.

As a jet-rated pilot, I must say that it is hard to understand the rationale of people who, faced with severe weather of any kind, want to go anyway. Few if any pilots harbor a death wish.

In the Jet Blue situation there were several competing forces...full gates, some immovable airplanes, irate passengers, company policies, FAA regulations, etc etc. My sympathy is with the pilots, who had no choice in the matter.

In the news -- Delta flight grounded, passengers held on plane for 11 hours.

So if that's your yardstick, Delta is 'out' now too.

Bobmrg, I agree with you. I don't remember exactly which incident it was where it was recently reported a pilot of a diverted plane requested in vain for an open gate at the interim airport so pleading passengers could get off. The tower disregarded his requests in favor of regularly scheduled flights. Out of exasperation, after waiting 8 hours, he took matters into his own hands and parked the plane. I say good for him--I can't begin to imagine the balancing act crew must handle between passengers and tower.

The silver lining in this incident is that it may be the impetus necessary to get a passenger's bill of rights through congress finally.

Here's the lounge discussion on the &quot;Passenger Bill of Rights&quot;...

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34947415

Something has got to give. I remember, last year on Jet Blue, nearly being charged at by a flight attendent when I attempted to use the bathroom. We were sitting on the tarmac for nearly an hour because of a severe thunderstorm. But it seems that passengers are not allowed to get out of their seats during this time - FAA regulations??

The &quot;Passenger Bill of Rights&quot; won't be a silver lining. It'll mean more cancelled flights, more passengers stranded at airports (vs on the planes), and it won't help relieve the congestions today.

Unfortunately, the stupid carriers are not smart enough to avoid these kinds of stuff, a few years after the NW incident.

Just too bad. Everybody loses.

I'd definitely fly Jet Blue, especially for long distance flights. However, they certainly aren't low-cost for coast-to-coast flights....United and American are almost always cheaper...but the flying experience is definitely worth the extra cost. We dread going back to other domestic carriers with the cramped leg room and being fed on the airline's schedule. Getting stuck on the tarmac could happen to any airline depending on the airline and how many gates they have at that airport, plus many other factors.

Yes, I'll continue to fly with them. I've always been satisfied with them in the past, and choose to fly with them between Florida and NY.

Returning from Amsterdam (Delta) we had a minor equipment problem at JFK and missed our departure time. Forty-five minutes later, when we were repaired, we began to taxi out and stopped. To make a long story short, we sat on the plane (mostly on the ground) from JFK to Orlando longer than we were on the plane from Amsterdam to NY. Since then I was told by a friend whose uncle was an air traffic controller at JFK for years that pretty much if you miss your departure time at JFK between 3 and 9 PM, you can rot in hell. But since the pilots seemed to think it was possible that they might get clearance to fly, we had engines running the whole time and, ridiculously enough, had to return to the gate twice to refuel during the long wait.

Still 11 hrs. in that kind of weather seems a bit much. I would think they'd have had a pretty good idea they weren't leaving any time soon. Sometimes if it's equipment, I think they hold people on planes so passengers can't demand to be changed to another carrier. But in this case, that shouldn't have been a factor, both because no one else was flying and because I doubt any other carriers accept JetBlue tickets.

Well, I didn't have to sit on the tarmac or wait in the airport...but I just got home from being cancelled by Jet Blue! The only silver lining is that we got an email cancellation message on DH's Blackberry as we were heading to the airport, so we just turned east and went into NYC for the evening. A little retail therapy and nice dinner to sooth our nerves... Obviously with all the bad weather cancellations, we can't get on anything until Tuesday, but since we were only going down until Monday, that's not too helpful. Since our bags were all packed, I've been trying to find another warm weather destination to go to tomorrow, but so far, no luck!!!

Don't blame Jet Blue. They put safety first. What if they had disobeyed the air controllers and FAA regulations? In the New York vernacular: fuggettaboudit.

But couldn't they have avoided imprisoning their passengers for such a long time, perhaps by better anticipating the hold? Maybe not, I'm certainly no expert.

The side effects of the storm persist, of course. My daughter took an AirTran flight from Boston to Washington that was due to depart at 6:30 PM tonight, it arrived in DC two hours late. AirTran's first flight today at 6:30 AM was cancelled and there was at least one person still trying to get out of Boston onto my daughter's flight -- he could have driven to DC faster.

BTW, heads up: I just saw a teaser on TV and Dave Letterman's Top Ten tonight is going to be Jet Blue's Top Ten Excuses.

Definitely not! Even the name sounds unsavory. Jet Blue. Makes me think of a brand of jeans sold at Walmart.

It's amazing. NW and AA did it, and everybody was ready to grill them; Jetblue did it, and we had a bunch of defenders.

sacre bleu!
I love jet blue

I've never flown w/ JetBlue, but come on people! Give it a rest already! These things happen once in a while with commercial aviation. Big deal.

I'm an easy going passenger and while I get annoyed like everyone else having to sit on the runway for 8 hours, I get over it. Life's too short.

I'm also w/ Bobmrg.

Then again, I confess I'm not a business traveller, where delays might have impact on your work.

I wonder if this would ever happen on Hooters Airlines? If it did, there certainly would be a lot of jugs of milk to feed the passengers!

Hoosier Daddy?

I love Jet Blue and would fly them again and again.

OK - thanks for the responses, I am back to my old cheap self. I won't boycott any carrier over delays. But I just can't imagine being forced to sit in a cramped airless plane for 11 hours knowing that freedom was just a short walk away. I have circled the airport for up to an hour to land, or sat in line for that long waiting to take off - I have spent 3-4 hours in the Chicago terminal waiting for my connector to come in - but 11 hours in a plane on the ground is beyond my comprehension. Wouldn't people start to freak out? If there was a medical emergency they would get someone off. There should be time limits and guidelines to these situations.

How stupid.

Almost every one of the airlines has held passengers hostage for a length of time that is much much too long.

Agree with Bobmrg completely.

I have always loved Jet Blue, too, but they really are not handling this week's weather-related difficulties! Maybe growing pains. I just read in the NY Times that they cancelled every flight out of JFK that left after 5:00 p.m. yesterday (ours was one of them). This was not because of high winds (as we assumed), but because they did not have flight crews to match the aircraft as a result of Wednesday's storm cancellations. According to the article, they had to call police to guard the counter, and &quot;there were literally thousands of people in winding lines.&quot; I'm sorry we couldn't make our trip, but I thank my lucky stars that we found out about the cancellation before getting to the airport.

BTW, their phone reservation service couldn't handle the mess, either. We tried calling for hours to rebook, and they had a message saying they wouldn't take any calls. Finally, we got through, and were put on hold for a long time (at least we got through, though!).

It's really too bad, because until now Jet Blue has been a model of efficiency!

they also are only low-cost up to a point. If you want an offpeak travel time, you can get some great deals, but if not the fares can be as high as any other carrier.

I hate to trash them because they've been so great in the past, but I think they have gotten a huge black eye this week.

I love Jet Blue. I'm flying out from JFK on Sunday morning...I'm crossing my fingers for decent weather!

Joe Scarborough on MSNBC was stuck on a Delta plane for 9 hours the same day as all the JetBlue planes were grounded.

One of the many real aviation problems in the US is that this government is cutting traffic controller jobs. More air traffic, but less controllers does not help.

Donna, you echoed my sentiments exactly. I would either have OVER-sedated myself, in order to deal with it, or I would have been arrested for having had a MASSIVE, MASSIVE panic attack. LOL

Someone on tv said yesterday that travelers must start up with the class-action lawsuits because treatment of travelers has gotten so bad that the &quot;suits&quot; at the airlines were going to have to learn that it is not acceptable. He said that it is not the employees faults. However, lack of civility on their part, IS their fault. Perhaps there is an idea there.

Assuming that the airport gates were all full so that the plane could not return to let passengers get off, why couldn't Jet Blue have brought some food (e.g. box lunches) and bottled water out to the passengers on the plane? This would have blunted some of the criticism.

Like someone else mentioned the one thing that does amaze me is that the passengers don't go nuts and pull the exit door and activate the slide. I realize this is drastic and I'm not condoning it at all, but if you have someone who is scared of flying or a little clostrophobic and you trap them on a plane for 11 hours, all heck could break loose. I surprised someone didn't bolt for the door when they opened the hatch to let in air...yes I know it's 30 feet down but people do stranger things!

I am not a happy flier to begin with. Frankly, though I acknowledge the relative safety of air travel, not to mention the overwhelming convenience factor, flying scares the bejesus out of me. Irrational, yes, but still real.

Add to that all of the stress that can come along with flying (seems so many people who work for airlines get rude without provocation - perhaps their jobs really suck and it makes them mean; I mean it can't be that only jerks apply for the jobs). The result is an unhappy and stressed flier. I have found that a small, consistent dosing of a mild sedative is the answer. Not so much to make you loopy (the ground agents would likely deny you access to the plane due to inebriation), but just enough so you don't give a damn about anything that may happen. This care-free feeling allows me to deal calmly with the attendant who has told me I cannot use the bathroom. Calmly stated, &quot;I have to go. I am not making it up, and I don't like it any more than you, but it is going to happen regardless. The question now is how long I can hold it, and where will it happen.&quot;

I don't condone drug abuse, but for someone who otherwise sweats bullets during a hassle-free, good-weather flight pharmacology is your friend. (Legal and prescribed by a physician, obviously.)

Orlando_Vic, I'll admit up front that I know absolutely nothing about conditions at that airport on that day or what equipment the airline or airport might have had available. So I'm doing a lot of guessing.

IF the airport had any moveable stairways available, would it have been possible for ramp personnel to push/drive them out to the airplane, or were conditions on the ramp such that IF any were available they could not be moved?

Given that hot food is hard to come by on airlines these days (the kitchen serving Seattle-Tacoma has gone out of business), where would the food have come from?

Commenting on another post (not yours, Vic) I think the story about the pilot taking matters into his own hands and parking the airplane is an urban legend. First, he would have been in violation of Federal Aviation Regulation 91.123, &quot;Compliance with ATC Clearances and Instructions&quot; (Part 91, General Operating and Flight Rules applies to all flights, including Part 121 airline operations).

Second, where would he have &quot;parked&quot; it other than at a gate? Ground space at airline terminals is congested at best, and airliners can't be driven around like Volkswagens...he would have needed at least one marshaller and two wing walkers when he got in close. If he wasn't at a gate, how could the pax disembark? Sorry to have dragged you into this extension of the original discussion, Vic.

Bobmgr - I've been curious as to the rule on how long the crew could stay on the plane and still fly? After sitting for 11 hours, with no guarantee of the emoitional shape they'd be in I question there &quot;ability&quot; to fly safely. I'm not sure what the destinations of these flights were or how long the crew had been working but wouldn't this all come in to play at some point? I have the utmost respect for the pilots and cabin personnel but even they must have a &quot;breaking&quot; point.

Sorry, previous for for bobmrg, not mgr