In the past, I've been very happy with Jet Blue, but I was trapped in flight cancellation hell for 47 hours.
It was supposed to be a simple 6 hour flight direct from JFK to Long Beach, CA. Dumbledore and I have done it a half dozen times. Leave the house in CT at 2pm, get to JFK around 4-ish, board the 6pm flight and arrive in CA around 9, up the next morning to go to work. It's been very convenient for my purposes, and has worked well.
Until Sunday night. We arrived at JFK a bit after 4 despite heavier traffic than usual, Blair driving, Daniel along for company. (There's another story in how long it took them to get back to CT, but that's for another time). I stop at a monitor and receive a nasty surprise - my flight was canceled. We got on the check in line which is longer than usual with people who would normally have been in the bag drop line.
At the end of my wait, I am helped by a lovely young man (who will turn out to not have been so lovely after all, as we shall soon see), who put me on standby for the 8am direct flight to Long Beach, and booked me on the 3pm flight which stops in Salt Lake City. We inquire about a hotel voucher - the passenger bill of rights, that Jet Blue is a signatory to, states that if the cancellation is their fault (so weather doesn't count, and we were told it was a maintenance issue) and they give less than 4 hours' notice (and the email I have was sent after 4pm, so less than 2 hours' notice), they have to put passengers up in a hotel. Lovely young man says we need to speak with a supervisor, and he has sent for one. We stand aside with a woman and her daughter who would also like a voucher.
This is when it starts to get ugly. When the supervisor arrives, he first tells us there are no rooms. No rooms? are the hotels full?, my new friend asks. No, he clarifies, there are no vouchers. You've run out? No, he reluctantly says, there won't be any. Thus follows a long heated discussion that touches on the length of time it can take some text messages to be delivered (3 hours?), the passengers' bill of rights and Jet Blue's participation therein, and a spurious claim that the flight was canceled at 1pm rather than 4 (I hadn't yet checked my email at that point but this guy was speaking out of his ... rear. Later we overheard him telling other passengers that the cancellation was weather related, I'm assuming that he was trying to avoid other heated lengthy discussions) and the rather unbelievable claim that he was the highest ranking employee in the entire terminal and yet didn't have the authority to issue vouchers.
Finally, we decamped, after my new friend and I exchanged phone numbers. Blair, Daniel, Dumbledore and I went downstairs to hunt down a hotel room for me, given that I would have to get back to the airport early, and that Blair had to work in the morning and wouldn't be able to drive me in. I found a hotel that would take Dumbledore and Blair and Dan decided to accompany me on the train to where I could get a shuttle to the hotel, for which I was very grateful (especially after I found out how late they got home that night.)
At this point I was so tired and hot that I didn't care that the motel was a dump, warm and humid inside (although the AC worked fine once it was turned on), with a room that smelled vaguely of the minty smell of toilet cleaner, and free wireless internet that was only available in the minuscule, warm, humid lobby. There was no room service or even restaurant, just takeout menus. While attempting to get some work done (I'm paid hourly as a contractor and if I don't work, I don't get paid, and with my contract ending Wednesday, I need all the hours I can put in) in the lobby, with Dumbledore tethered to my chair, I ordered Dominos, including plain chicken for Dumble. We took the food back to the room, and I peeled and pulled apart the chicken for him. I should have rinsed off the fat too, I realized later; it was very greasy, but thankfully he has suffered no ill effects.
We slept very poorly. Dumble kept getting enraged by the dog in the mirror wall across from the bed, and would not be reassured by being brought over to meet the stranger close up. I tossed and turned with the uncomfortable bed, mediocre pillows and loud, unfamiliar AC- not to mention traffic sounds, and noises from other patrons. We got up at 4:45 to make a 5:30 shuttle back to the airport.
I very nearly made it on to the 8am flight, but there were only middle seats available, and she ran out of time to get someone to switch (dog carriers won't fit under the middle seats) when she started receiving conflicting orders to hold the plane for some 9 people who still hadn't boarded and to lock up and get on the plane so it could take off. She was running down the jetway last I saw her.
I got a boarding pass for the flight I was confirmed on, a flight taking off around 3, with a stop in Salt Lake City. With hours to kill, I set up at one of the workstations, which have the most uncomfortable seats I've encountered in a long time. For one thing stools are problematic for short people, my feet don't rest comfortably where normal folks would - they dangle. For another, the seats themselves were backless and shaped like a wooden version of a tractor seat. A couple of hours of that was more than I could take, but there was nowhere comfortable to plug in the laptop. I had lunch and spent an hour getting a seated chair massage and a foot massage, hoping to make up for the lack of sleep, avoid getting the heebie-jeebies in my legs during the flight and to un-ache muscles punished by puppy backpacks, and lifting and hauling my carry on (which contains two laptops and other essentials, but no dog kibble, a situation I will rectify the next time I fly with Dumbledore.)
I boarded the plane and settle Dumble underneath. I was in the aisle seat and soon a young couple came up to my row. She too had a boarding pass for seat 6C, but there was no one currently in the window seat, so they settled in to see what would happen. But shortly thereafter a young man showed up with a ticket for the window seat. The girl volunteered to be reseated in case there were only middle seats. In the midst of everything I was informed that mine was the bogus boarding pass, but they found space for the girl, so I stayed on the plane.
When it landed in Salt Lake, passengers continuing to Long Beach were asked to deplane (for cleanup I think), but we were told we could leave our carry-ons. I asked a flight attendant about where I was supposed to sit for the Long Beach Leg, given that the young couple was only ticketed through Salt Lake, so there was probably someone ticket for my seat to Long Beach. She advised me to talk to them when they got set up at the gate.
It turned out that I was not even on the manifest for the Long Beach leg, and probably shouldn't have even been on the flight to begin with, that the flight was full and they would get me on it if there were any no shows, and that there were no more flights to CA that night. About then I realized that the ticket agent in New York had not been so lovely after all. While I waited, a fellow passenger bought Dumbledore a bottled water and we cut up a plastic cup so he could have a drink. He was whining to go potty, but I wouldn't have been able to get back thorough security without a boarding pass. I found some newspaper in the trash and encouraged him to use it, but he was unimpressed.
They were unable to get me on the flight and unable to retrieve my suitcase, which I hoped would be waiting for me when I eventually got to Long Beach. This time though, the supervisor happily got me situated with a hotel, making the reservation himself, and making sure they were okay with the dog, and getting them to come pick me up in their shuttle. While he was setting this up, told me we could finish up at the check in desk so I could take Dumble outside. He told me where to meet him and I headed for the the outside.
I made a mad dash through an airport shop looking for something to wear, not knowing what would be available outside of security or at the hotel, and took Dumble outside. He peed for EVER. Every time I thought he surely had to be finished, he kept going. Poor baby! He'd been in the crate for 17 hours without complaint. I'm amazed at what an even-tempered, well behaved guy he is.
The rest of the story goes much smoother. The hotel (a Comfort Inn) was nice - clean, up to date, no funny smells, comfy bed and pillows, no dogs in mirror walls, internet in the room, fee breakfast, room service (burger for me and a plain chicken breast for Dumble.) The front desk clerk even had a little box of laundry soap for me. I got back to the airport in plenty of time, made my flight no problem, my suitcase was waiting for me, my aunt picked me up and I was at the office by 1pm.
I learned some valuable lessons, like always travel with kibble and clean underwear in your carry on. But some of my fellow passengers from Sunday evening's original flight may not have fared even so well as I did. The only other Long Beach flight on Monday besides the 8 am that I didn't get on, and the 3 o'clock I did get on, was the 6 o'clock flight that night, and guess what? They canceled it.
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