Posted on 02/26/2007 2:34:44 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
JetBlue canceled 68 flights because of snow Monday, nearly a week after the airline pledged to compensate customers for more than a thousand canceled flights from the Valentine's Day storm two week earlier.The canceled flights at John F. Kennedy International Airport affected flights to or from Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Va.; Washington, D.C., Portland, Maine; and Chicago. The company also canceled flights into and out of Chicago and the Washington, D.C., area over the weekend.
The cancellations were an attempt to make sure crews and planes were situated so the company could quickly resume operations after the snow, JetBlue Airways Corp. spokeswoman Alison Eshelman said.
The storm brought 2 inches to Manhattan; 2 to 4 inches in the area.
Early Monday, customers described delays, bad communication from crew members, and general frustration that echoed complaints that led to the company's bill of rights following the last storm.
Doug Rosenberg and Segun Akande, 22-year-old college students at Duke University, had their flight from New York to Raleigh, N.C., canceled after being delayed on the runway for hours.
"It was so bad," said Akande. "We were waiting on the plane for so long. You would think they would tell us to go back to the terminal after an hour or two."
Rosenberg said the airline did a poor job telling passengers about what was going on and offering service after the flight was canceled. "I never witnessed this bad of service in my entire life," said Rosenberg.
Eshelman confirmed that the students' flight was supposed to depart at 9:45 p.m. but that its departure was delayed until 11:47 p.m.
She said the plane left for deicing on the runway, but due to the weather in New York and Raleigh the company canceled the flight. It was turned back to the terminal by 2:45 a.m., she said.
Eshelman said that in accordance with the customer bill of rights, each of the 100 passengers would receive $100 vouchers good for any future flight and their choice of either a refund or accommodation on a future flight.
"I'm not upset that the flight did not take off," Rosenberg said later Monday morning after rebooking his flight and finding out about the voucher. "I just wish there was better communication."
Earlier this month, JetBlue was heavily criticized after bad weather stranded passengers in planes at Kennedy, its main hub, for up to 10 1/2 hours.
The company, which had hoped to ride out the bad weather without canceling flights, later admitted it took too long to call airport authorities for help in getting the passengers off the grounded planes. It couldn't resume normal operations for days because flight crews weren't where they were supposed to be.
More than 1,000 cancellations were caused by the Feb. 14 winter blast, and more than 100,000 passengers were affected.
Passengers whose Monday flights were canceled were being notified by e-mail and by telephone. They can rebook through Thursday without paying extra or can request refunds or credits for future travel, JetBlue said.
If you want on or off my aerospace ping list, please contact me by Freep mail.
Jetred.
"I blue, blue, I'm so blue, I am so blue - I don't know what to do"
I was flying JetBlue back in August, on that day when the scare went up about the gel bombs, and things were delayed all up and down the East Coast. We were hurried onto our connecting flight at JFK, then had to sit and wait for two hours for the clearance for take off. If we hadn't gotten on the plane, though, we'd have had two hours to wait IN the terminal as well as on the plane because of the enormous back-up at the airport. At least we were able to watch our personal back of the seat TV's while waiting on the tarmac.
JetBlueSky only?
Was this the only airline affected?
They'll never fly to CRP. Theoretically I could fly from CRP to HOU on Southwest and HOU to JFK on JetBlue, but it would have to be on two separate tickets. If flights got cancelled due to weather, it would be difficult to get reimbursed or rescheduled. I detest Southwest's no interline baggage policy. It locks customers from small markets like CRP into only flying connecting flights on Southwest. No airline is going to try to compete with Southwest on the CRP-HOU route, so it's not worthwhile to book flights with any of the airlines flying out of HOU except ATA, because of their code share between HOU and LGA and the cities in Texas served by Southwest.
I've been tempted to take JetBlue but it seems everything they fly goes thru JFK.
Now I remember why I don't fly thru JFK.
I've found that Southwest is not that competitive with other airlines that fly into the Boston area, where we live now. I keep checking prices on their site, and they're never that good. Southwest doesn't fly into Gulfport, either, only New Orleans, and that's a pain.
But at least there are other options. At CRP, each airline that flies there is the monopoly operator on a route. Continental Express only flies to IAH which is about 15 miles north of downtown Houston. American Eagle only flies to DFW. Delta Connection only flies to ATL. Southwest has a flight that goes CRP-HOU-DAL. In May Expressjet will start a CRP-AUS-ONT service. Only the American Eagle, Continental Express, and Delta Connection services have any provision for interline connections and transfer of baggage between airlines.
CRP is the only airport in the entire Southwest system that only has nonstop service to one other airport (HOU). The inability to make connections to other airlines at HOU is quite a hardship, because of the geographical isolation of CRP. Due to certain software rules, it is impossible to buy tickets on Southwest's website for many destinations from CRP that are available to someone starting from either HOU or DAL even though all Southwest flights originating from CRP go to HOU then DAL. It is necessary to call their service desk to book flights from CRP to SEA and other west coast cities due to the restrictions on the number of allowable stops on an itenary even though several of those stops do not involve changing planes.
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