Mokka mit Schlag » Travel

In all the brouhaha over JetBlue stranding passengers on airplanes for hours last Wednesday, one thing I haven’t seen explained until now is why this specifically happened to JetBlue. Usually when we hear a story like this, it’s at a major hub airport like Detroit that’s primarily served by one airline. JFK is a hub for JetBlue, but unlike Detroit or Atlanta, JetBlue is hardly the only airline with a lot of planes there. What did JetBlue do wrong that other airlines at JFK didn’t? The New York Times seems to have figured that out. In brief:

• Other airlines canceled more flights sooner due to the weather.
• Communications within the company broke down. Pilots and flight attendants were not able to get assignments.
• The reservation system was overloaded so passengers could not get through to humans.

A lot of this is blamed on both the rapid growth and low cost structure of JetBlue. They hadn’t built enough slack into their systems to handle an event like this.

How many times have I been at the airport waiting for a delayed plane? I’ve lost count. Dozens of times, and I’m not all that frequent a flier. Sometimes I’ve waited almost an entire day. How many times have the airlines told me the flight is delayed before I left my house? Exactly once in over thirty years of flying, and that was almost twenty years ago. Something needs to be done.
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How many more stories like this one are we going to have to hear before Congress does something? The fundamental problem is that it is cheaper and simpler for the airlines to keep passengers crammed in deep vein thrombosis-inducing seats for ten hours on the slim hope that they might be able to take off than to allow them to get off the plane. Never mind what the passengers want.

Here’s a modest proposal: any plane that spends two hours on the ground after passengers have boarded must return to the terminal and disembark. No exceptions. No leeway for “We’re now tenth in line” or “We think the weather’s clearing up now. Just a few more minutes.” If the plane isn’t taxiing down the runway, it goes back to the terminal. If the gates are full, then pull up the stairs and let the passengers walk. This would give passengers who want to leave or make other arrangements the opportunity. Other passengers could at least walk around, use a full-sized toilet, get something to eat or drink, and so forth.

Frankly I’m hesitant to suggest additional regulations for such a marginal industry that’s usually about one broken propeller away from bankruptcy, but sometimes the egregious nature of an industry’s own incompetence and customer hostility demands action, even if it pushes a marginal company or two over the edge.
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Either Silicon Valley is declining in importance or New York City is or both. Used to be there were flights between the two every couple of hours. However, I just made my reservations to fly out for SD West and couldn’t get a direct flight out until 5:00 in the afternoon. There was one flight that left at 5:30 A.M., changed planes in Houston, and got there by noon. Otherwise, the earliest I could arrive was 5:00 in the afternoon.

Oh well, at least there’s still a direct red-eye home Friday night. (For a couple of years there wasn’t even that.)

Yesterday I went through the airport security lines for the second time since the new no liquids, no gels rules were imposed; and I learned something new. Not only can you go through with four 3.5 oz bottles of liquid but not one 12 ounce bottle. It doesn’t actually matter how much liquid is in the bottle, only what it says on the side of the bottle.

You can walk right through with six ounces of liquid in a bottle that’s labeled as three ounces, but Lord help you if you try to go through with a half full, four ounce bottle. Furthermore you can still buy 20oz bottles of water and Diet Coke on the other side of the checkpoint so someone is able to get cases of liquids through. Yeah, this makes so much sense.

Will we ever get high speed train service in this country? After riding the Acela roundtrip from New York to Boston and back this past week, I’m afraid the answer is no. As the crow flies, Boston is about 306 kilometers from New York. On the most expensive train that trip takes just about three and a half hours, thirty-forty minutes faster than the cheap train. As near as I can tell, this time savings is achieved mostly by skipping stations. Why Amtrak paid so much extra for these trains, I don’t know. The Acela poked along at a leisurely speed that afforded excellent views of the Atlantic coast and marshes. We rarely seemed to exceed 100 kilometers per hour. Cars on the adjacent highways regularly passed us. Once we were passed by a Metro North commuter train! And I’m not even counting the twenty minutes we stopped waiting for a bridge to be fixed in Rhode Island.
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