I just spend 20 hours traveling from NY to Las Vegas for a luxury travel conference because of the poor handling of the few agents to assist delayed passengers. My flight was scheduled to depart JFK at 6:40pm. Every hour after that the delays were in half hour to 20 min increments. The gate changes for our proposed flight changed 5 to 6 times and had us moving our hard to get seats as many times.
In fairness, there was lightening which caused many delays. That being said, I asked if there was a chance that the flight may be cancelled and as told a few times, no, the flight will eventually go. At our last gate at 1:30am with no offer for meal vouchers or any compensation there was a customer service desk with 2 people manning it and a 2 hr line and there were not enough staff to answer questions.
When the flight was cancelled we asked about how we get our luggage. They said go to luggage services in the baggage area where they will help you. Mind you, there were many other delayed flights that did depart and did arrive so the baggage area was chaos with another 2 hr line and no announcement of how we retrieve our luggage.no staff was available around the luggage belts to ask where our luggage might be. It was now 2:30am.
We had to go to the ticketing desks in another building to see if we could be put on another flight to vegas. There was nothing available (after another hour in line) for 2 days. I called American and bought a ticket (2) for my colleague and I from Laguardia through to Dallas connecting to Vegas ledaving at 6am. These were $750 pp. Then I had to get my luggage.now it was 3:30am and I waited in line and everyone was told the luggage would be on the first AVAILABLE flight the next day.
A man finally got on the PA system and said, for sll the cancelled flights go home and rest and come back tomorrow and you can get your luggage (which was locked up). On that note I barged into their little office which was full of people trying to find out how to get their luggage and yelled to this man that I live 2 hrs away, had no way to get home, had a business meeting to get to an have booked another airline for $750 pp from a different airport and wanted my luggage NOW. Everyone was cheering me on and I was furious. I told him if he didn’t have staff to load the luggage on the belts he should do it himself. On that note, with a room full of angry tired people who had been there for 10 hours he radiod a supervisor who was nowhere to be seen for hours and that person made 1 call to put the luggage on a carousel and VOILA we had our luggage!
It was now 4am and the taxi line was 50 people deep and we paid a ton for a gypsy cab to take us to Laguardia for our 6am flight.
Jet Blue may be a budget airline, and they run it like a budget airline with few staff and poor communication. The terminal was filthy, not enough seating….and I won’t even mention the bathrooms!
After their nightmares in Feb. and their passenger bill of rights BS they have bot improved. I have recommended them to my clients and even booked them for my clients as a favor as they don’t compensate any travel agents. No more. To be treated like a dog in a kennel and told to go home and rest and come back tomorrow as if I had nowhere to go was insensitive and unacceptable. The later scheduled flight to vegas (9:35pm as opposed to my 6:45pm flight actually departed before they cancelled mine…go figure.
Its apparent they haven’t changed their mode of operations. I will be demanding a full refund of my entire ticket, even though they should pay for the one I had to buy which was $500 more, but they probably won’t. Stay tuned, I will post the outcome!
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