If you’re booked on a jetBlue flight to JFK airport in New York City today, your flight is cancelled. And if you were flying jetBlue to JFK tomorrow, well you’re flight is also cancelled. Tuesday? We’ll see. Thinking of driving to Raleigh and catching a jetBlue flight from there? Also not happening until at least Tuesday.
Why all the cancelled flights on jetBlue? The after effects of Thursday’s snowstorm in the Northeast. Oh, New York City airports are back to normal. That’s not the issue. The problem is entirely of jetBlue’s own making. There are limits on how long pilots and flight attendants can be on duty. The airline attempted to fly its normal schedule (or at least most of its flights) during the storm. Unsurprisingly, flights got delayed. That ate up the assigned crew’s available time. More crews got called in and their time got eaten up too.
The airline now finds itself with too flight attendants with hours remaining. jetBlue’s solution? Fly only its largest planes, 150-seat Airbus 320s, and essentially ground its 100-seat Embraer 190s for the momement. Charlotte and Raleigh are Embraer markets. Hence the cancellations.
Long term effects to traveler’s desire to fly the airline and the hit to the company’s earnings from this fiasco? Well, that might leave jetBlue feeling more than a little blue as well…
