On a B6 A320 for 3+ hours - and it's OK!

[PhilDernerJr]

I think I'll attack you for thinking you attacked JetBlue. :-p

I don't think his story would qualify as a 3-hour ground delay. Aside from evidence showing that various aspects were out of JetBlue's control, it didn't even total up to three hours.

Does anyone know their procedure for actually giving people those vouchers?

[kc2aqg]

Wow, I really didn't realize this topic would spark that much controversy. I'll clarify things a bit with timings to the best of my recollections:

10:30 - Boarded the aircraft
10:40 - Scheduled Departure Time
10:50 - Informed of maintenance issue
11:45 - Informed mx issue is fixed, waiting in line to push off the gate onto the ramp
12:10 - Pushed back and taxiied out to the deice pad at Twy Foxtrot
12:40 - Deicing commenced
12:50 - Deicing finished
1:00 - Off the ground
1:35 - On the ground at SYR

If you want the actual timings, you can check flightaware.com for jetBlue flight# 22 on the early morning of 12/26.

So to clarify, we were only on the airplane for about 10 minutes prior to the scheduled departure time, so the ground delay should be attributed from 10:40 on in my opinion. Also, keep in mind since SYR received a bunch of snow, we weren't off the plane until almost 2. The major portion of the delay was definitely due to the maintenance issue. Since the originating issue was a computer function, they cranked and shutdown the APU about 3 times before they decided to manually force the bleeds open. Between that and paperwork, I think that's what took so long. We also had a fair wait just to get pushed off the gate, and then another fair wait onto the deice pad, where we waited on Twy Fox next to the T5 construction just waiting for a pad to open up since they had a bunch of 10:40 & 11:30 flights.

I agree with Tommy in the fact that deicing nor the mx issue have to do with the fact that the TV wasn't activated until afterwards or that drinks/snacks weren't served while on the ground, and you can probably fault the flight crew on it. But it was a late night flight and people were sleeping, so I understand a little bit. I personally didn't care about the TV because I sat with my camera shooting and looking out the window the entire time.

We didn't receive vouchers on the airplane and it was never mentioned by the flight or ground crew. You could fault them on this too, but once again, I'm not in this to make money off of jetBlue, I was just glad to make it. If they offered me the voucher on the plane, in all honesty, (and feel free to call BS on me for this, but I had this thought even before I was taking this trip) I might have told them to keep the voucher, I'll still be a loyal customer.

Which brings me to my last point, which Phil hit the nail on the head: Based on the experience of the Valentine's day disaster, since its only been a week and a half, I wasn't sure of how much improvement they would have over their operation or how they would handle another storm. It was looking pretty grim at one point with between two and three inches of wet snow on the wing. While I'm not impressed with the way things were handled inside the cabin (TV etc), I was impressed with the crew attitudes and the fact that they worked hard enough to get us out. I think they should get props for improving their operation over a short period of time enough to get all of those flights out in fairly bad weather conditions.

I also would like to know about the procedure for giving out vouchers, since I just assumed it wasn't in effect yet (until I heard about that Fox story).