As a JetBlue employee who travels frequently to (and from) SLC I can tell you that once daily flight to JFK is without question JetBlue's hardest flight to pass ride on. I battle to get on with employee priority and more often than not, don't. Buddy pass riders don't stand a chance. Many nights there are upwards of 40 people on the standby list with just a handful of unsold seats. Imagine 2,100 JetBlue employees in SLC all jockeying for a few seats on a once daily flight. It's a nightmare, but that's how the pass riding game is played, and the employee who gave them the buddy passes should have known that. I don't give buddy passes to my SLC friends and family because there's no point.
And a lib reader:
I dont understand why is everybody bashing the parents? Is it a crime to travel with no money? You are all refering to parents having no funds with such a disdain that is so sad....come on people more than half the population of the USA is POOR. The airline is at fault indeed, they could have offered a hotel room, if they were concerned about the kids safety, they could've also offered an I-75 or I-90 to another airline,JetBlue simply didnt care....yes my husband has been an airline employee for over 20 years, luckily not for Jet Blue they worry more about their reputation than the wellbeing of a family. As for the relative that gave them the vouches - instead a reprimand he deserves a medal, this person allowed a POOR family to have some sort of relaxation...some of you Well off crtitics should have come to the family assistance instead of bashing them for offering their kids some kind of travel experience. God help us with people like you.
I saw these folks on Fox News yesterday, and have ZERO sympathy for them.
They gambled and LOST.
Not my trouble, not United Airlines problem, not the American public’s problem.
UA did a good thing, but they didn’t have to and unfairly using the press to EXTORT freebies from UA is unconscionable.
My wife worked for Alaska and, being empty nesters without pets, we flew a LOT on standby. Got to be true jet-setters for a few years but I HATED flying standby. We were stranded only once overnight, thank God, but that is because we tried to be very careful about where we went and when.
My wife and I are both retired from United with a total of 60 years service. Even for us, pass riding is a nightmare, and has gotten worse with the Continental merger. We’re on the bottom of the list. Continental is the surviving carrier (they just like the United name better).
The family made a stupid choice - travel for cheep, and it didn’t work.
Really they weren’t feeding the kids?
Well, they are getting their fifteen minutes and I am sure will receive enough free stuff to make up for their poor decisions.
Different scenario, I traveled from an RAF base to the US on a standby flight years ago. It was a great way to get from one place to another cheaply. I understood that I could be bumped by anyone having a higher rank than me doing the same thing, but it saved a lot of money and I did not get bumped. I had to buy a commercial airline ticket to get back to the UK after my leave.
The family doing it is stupid as is the person that gave them the buddy passes.
When I was flying my last few trips after I had decided to quit, my co-workers kept saying, "Really? How could you leave? You'll never get to go anywhere for vacation!" and my response was, "Are you serious?! I never get to go anywhere NOW!" This so-called "benefit" offered by the airlines is no longer beneficial and it hasn't been for years. Unless, of course, you are willing and able to spend 6 days stuck in an airport.
This is another example of "no good deed goes unpunished."
Years ago, I took in a friend of my wife who fell on hard times and was essentially homeless. She was only going to stay a week or so to get her life together. Three long months later, I'm the bad guy trying to get her to leave. I'm the one that's kicking her to the curb. But if she stayed any longer, my marriage would have been destroyed.
Never again!
The dirty little secret about Buddy Passes is that some airlines charge almosr $100 each way (albeit most of it is taxes) When I worked for an airline I would always tell my friends that it would be cheaper to buy a discount ticket that almost GUARANTEES you a seat. In the rare instance I did give out one I told them the seat wasn’t guaranteed until the wheels pulled up.
I always told the lead FA that I was NR (non-rev, back in the day when they did serve meals and they were short NRs went w/o) and they appreciated it and I even scored a few extra drinks because of it.
The one time my family flew standby, the fact that there was four of us actually worked in our favor. We arrived at the airport for our flight to Orlando 4 hours early, (obsessive-compulsive husband, HATES to be late). At the gate, there was an earlier flight getting ready to leave. The weather in Philly was deteriorating, and they were threatening to close the airport. Southwest announced that they would allow people to go standby on an earlier flight to their destination if there were seats left. There was a couple, a group of three, and us, third in line. There were four seats on the earlier flight, the gate agent did the math and decided choosing us would fill all four empty seats.
Do we heartless conservatives even dare to ask why they flew to SLC and where/who they stayed with and how they got around while there?
when we were poor, summer vacation fun was a big zinc wash tub filled with water in the backyard, and maybe popsicles from the ice cream truck
There are so many people walking the streets today with no education and no common sense. Any travelers checklist recommends taking cash for unintended expenses. If you don't have a backup plan or a way to get out of this type of predicament, then stay at home.
I would. Mama could have taken the first available flight with the little one rather than them trying for the entire family together. Truth be told, if they're that broke then they shouldn't be going anywhere on vacation. Stay home, work and pay the bills - which I'm sure they're behind on. As was said earlier, there's plenty of free things to do and see in NY. I haven't gone on a vacation for better than 10 years and then I didn't have to do it on someone else's dime.
These people are idiots.
I did the buddy pass thing 1 time on delta, my layover wasn’t this extreme but the price of the tickets was hardly next to nothing.. in fact it was barely cheaper than what I could have gotten bonafide fairs on JetBlue or Southwest for. After that 1 experience I opted against Buddy Passes from that point on.
What I want to know is did they have pass through a TSA inspection each time they tried to get on a plane ?
And the morons were waiting for four seats? One parent and one child could have flown out. Poor AND stupid.
I remember we were in Montana one year many years ago visiting my in-laws when Northwest went on strike. We had to take whatever the other airlines had available. We split up -- I took our daughter and hubby took our four-year-old son -- so that we could get home in time for our daughter to start school.