Gee, There Was A 6 Hour Tarmac Delay At New York's JFK Airport
So, we've recently noticed that the new cool thing for airlines to say when they mess up is some variation of, "We tried to make them comfortable," as if they were escorting you to meet your maker instead of transporting you to Minnesota to see your grandmother and eat "bars." We think this is creepy. We think they should stop saying this.
According to USAToday, Sun Country Flight 242 to Minneapolis was "supposed to take off from New York City on Friday about 11 a.m. local time. But passengers say the plane didn't start boarding until about noon, and didn't take off until after 6 p.m."
After about 3 hours a food cart arrived but there apparently wasn't enough food for all 100 passengers.
From USAToday:
"Our flight crew did everything in their power to make the passengers as comfortable as possible and to keep them informed," [Sun County chief executive Stan Gadek] said.
The passengers will be given refunds.
Sun Country fliers endure 6-hour ground delay at JFK [USAToday]
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Comments:
Why not just let them off the plane and call them back once the plane is ready to go?
Did anyone else click on the link for "bars"? My, isn't that a part of American culture of which I wasn't aware. You should also read the article on the "hotdish."
@katstermonster: at my wife's family reunion in southwestern MN, it was a potluck featuring over a dozen different kinds of bars, and even more kinds of hotdish.
@Boatski: Once you leave the gate, another plane usually takes it's place to either embark or disembark passengers. Plus, once you leave the line, you lose your place in take off order. No frontsies OR backsies.
From what I understand the reason that they don't let people off and then bring them back on is that they rarely if ever really know how long the delay will be. And that is just sad, airlines should not be a guessing game, I mean really.
@katstermonster: I totally did, though I already knew about both bars and hotdish, courtesy of a good friend from MN.
FWIW, hotdish is delish, though in Ohio, I think we'd just call it a casserole.
@mavkato: If you haven't yet, see "Drop Dead Gorgeous." They love them some lemon bars, donchaknow? That movie, though it's actually a mockumentary, has some pretty revealing documentary-esque takes on MN.
It seems like buzzphrases (is that even a word yet?) like "We did everything in our control to make the passengers comfortable" is the new norm in vague, nebulous language for airlines when it comes to avoiding blame. Is there some heretofore unknown law on the books with some loophole about the airlines not being held responsible for screw-ups so long as they "made every effort to make passengers comfortable"? This is such nonsense; when's that passengers' bill o' rights getting signed?
If you can't bring enough for everyone ....
I also had the misfortune to be flying out of New York area to Minneapolis on Friday afternoon. Luckily (sorta), I was supposed to be on a 2pm flight from Newark. Aside from the usual headaches at Newark, like getting there, the alarms were all going off in the terminal when I arrived to find my flight was going to be 90 minutes late. Being a summer afternoon in New York, this isn't that strange. I went through security hoping that the alarms wouldn't all be blaring on the other side. I was wrong. In addition my flight was now canceled.
After pleading and playing real nice, I managed to get Continental to book me through DTW on an Delta/NW flight for the last leg. The next flight to MSP was full, and the agent didn't seem optimistic about the two later flights. I was supposed to arrive about four hours late, but it's better than having to pay $30 and take the train back into the city and out the next morning for a 6am flight they had booked me on. We boarded the plane for my new flight to Detroit right on time, but then we sat there for an hour, without moving.
The reason? A bright red splotch stretching from Baltimore to northern NJ as slowly inching northeast. Until that thing passed, flights weren't going to be going anywhere -- in fact, flights weren't landing either. After an hour Continental took the plane back to the gate, where everyone just hung out and looked at the people trying to go to South Carolina who were confused why they were being told their plane was diverted to Burlington. I had a distinct impression they weren't going anywhere.
Anyway, after about 2 hours milling about the gate they finally let us back on the plane, where we waited in line with other planes and took off about an hour later. The flight attendant was visibly exhausted, but was able to inject some humor into the situation, which made things much better. The pilot was completely upfront with everything about the trip -- "Folks, I thought the were directing us to get in line for takeoff, looks like they're just directing us to park for a bit." I finally got to MSP about 6 hours later than I was supposed to, but I made it there. And I even beat the 3:25 flight from EWR. Yeah, it was painful, but it sounds like I got off relatively okay.
The sad thing is that I treated the whole experience like it was normal for flying out of New York on a Friday afternoon. In the past I've had 9pm JetBlue flights that landed in Pittsburgh at 5:30am (never had a red-eye going THAT way before), 10am flights that took off 6pm and had to land somewhere else because they were running out of fuel, and numerous times that I've just given up.
I'm not trying to excuse Sun Country, but having limited resources at JFK almost surely played a part in this problem. Continental owns EWR and that worked to our advantage because they had staff there to service the plane, manage the gate, and service customers. When I've taken Sun Country in the past that's not the case (at least from JFK). Furthermore, it seems like a pretty normal thing whenever you take an airline with few gates at an airport -- just another thing to keep in mind when booking that really cheap fare.
Sorry, sitting in a cramped, hot, stuffy plane with nothing to do, with a bunch of other sweaty people and crying babies...no matter how many tiny pillows and miniature bags of peanuts you bring me, I am not going to be any more comfortable, and it is still tatamount to torture.
@katstermonster: LOL. Welcome to the upper Midwest!
I did not grow up in bar or hotdish culture, but I do have a few recipes I've snagged from friends because they're terribly convenient for potlucks!
They were just waiting for their allotment of lemon-soaked paper napkins.
Once we perfect stasis technology it will just be a matter of putting passengers into a state of suspended animation.
What is the deal with planes flying to MN this week?
Were I on the plane with my 4 year old, my 4 month-old, and my wife - I'd willingly go to jail for the night to get them off the plane.
"Excuse me...Stewardess? We've been here for X hours. It's time to take us all back to the gate."
"I'm sorry sir - please take your seat."
"Erm... Ok... Will that be before I charge the cockpit door, or after?"
@katstermonster: Welcome to the upper Midwest, indeed. My first reaction was "wait, not EVERYONE has these things? You really need to look it up on wikipedia?"
How about this for a genius idea? Don't push back from the *#$)(*@ gate until it's a nice, orderly taxi to the departure runway? It's not as if there is a huge gate shortage at American airports right now.
@NYGal81: It'd be a casserole here in Michigan too, but we have dessert bars as well. Doesn't everyone? There's also a link to glorified rice which is nasty. Everyone in my family loves it though.
@katstermonster: Any sweet in bar form is pretty much tops, though I also was raised a few hundred miles from the epicenter of the true bars territory. We also never called anything "hotdish."
Also this, from the wiki: "the word pronunciation of the "ar" is with "a pirate-like arrr" followed by a soft clipped s."
I followed the instructions, then immediately made myself laugh, because that's spot-on.
well... I guess the bright side in this huge pile of suck is that the passengers got a refund. Too bad they can't refund those 6 hours that got wasted however...
Sounds like a good business opportunity. Bring out the rolling staircases and open up a Starbucks on the tarmac.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): That I found totally confusing. You'd think airlines had a formula.
@sirwired: Logistics issues on the tarmac aside, you'd need an instant pushback for something like that to really work without holding everyone else up. Pushbacks require assistance from people on the ground, who handle many planes across the airport. No practical way to synchronize that when you factor delays, (yes, some delays are actually legitimate), other gates (no, there isn't a full crew standing around at every gate) and other tasks.
(Coming from a former NW employee, though one that hasn't had to work in that field at all)
@katstermonster: I still fear whatever 'hotdish' is, but I'm very familiar with the concept of bar cookies. I've never seen anything to indicate they were a regional food before. Now I'm going to have to go through all my US state community cookbooks and do a recipe survey!
Wow, they're actually giving them refunds instead of vouchers. That's unexpected.
@knyghtryda: We all know the solution will come when the airlines discover they're spending more refunding passenger's fares than they'd spend fixing the problem that causes the delays.
Until then, we're gonna have to deal with it or perfect teleportation.
@shrike071: I suspect you wouldn't get away with overnight for an offense that's penalized by up to twenty years.
The only thing that will change their response to these situations is if someone who normally should not have, die in the plane. Although it might pose a security risk to let the people off so I don't know...
OK OK. The only thing that will change their response to these situations is if everyone on the plane died. There.
This will continue until some diabetic like me dies while trapped in one of these ridiculous situations.
Yes I plan ahead and bring food etc. But TSA does not make it easy. How much real food can you keep on you while adhering to the silly container rules?
Wow. Usually Sun Country is the only airline I fly when going to or from Minnesota. They have always been nice, professional, and CHEAP!
@Boatski:
What, and destroy the airlines perfect on-time departure record!?!
Honestly, I wish airlines would stop tracking departure and arrival as separate events and just combine it into a single statistic named something like "Trip Completed On Time"
After all, travelers don't care if their 3 hour flight "departs on time" only to sit on the tarmac for 4 or 5 hours before even rolling onto a runway. At that point, who cares about the on-time departure? You could have probably caught a later plane with a slightly worse "departure" rating, and beaten the earlier flight!
I also want to know how long it takes to go gate to gate. If this causes the airlines to start advertising flight times that include a 50% chance of a 3 hour, in-plane layover, so be it. Let the market sort itself out.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!):
If they were sitting on the tarmac, why couldn't they send out additional catering trucks?
@Porcelina: ...but do you miss the lutefisk? I've lived here for 30 years now, and sure as hell don't miss it.
@VOIDMunashii:
I can just see the headlines now: Man wakes up to find 5 years have passed, never left the airport. "We just kept having to bump him to a later flight" states a customer rep for the airline.
This nearly happened to me on Sun Country earlier this month, actually. I was flying into JFK from Minnesota and the plane got delayed for an hour at the terminal, and then another hour on the tarmac.
Sun Country was very upfront about the reason, though, which was that JFK was ordering them not to take off due to excessive air traffic coming in to their airport. From what I understand, this is a chronic problem for JFK, and isn't likely to go away even with the recent opening of their new terminal. I imagine they have the same problem with planes going out, too.
I think Sun Country only has that one plane that transits between Minnesota and NYC, so they probably got the go ahead, then just got bumped down the list continually, since they're a low priority carrier.
@sirwired:
Have you flown through Atlanta on Continental? Our flight going both ways ended up having to sit on the tarmac, within eyeshot of the terminal because there was another flight (delayed) at our gate.
We had a 2 hour wait while the plane at our gate waited for its flight crew to arrive. They couldn't redirect us to another gate, nor would they roll out one of those stairway things so we could at least get off the plane and into the terminal.
The real funny part was...the flight crew they were waiting for...were on our plane...as passengers. Catch 22. Even after the crew realized the problem, it took the airport another hour to figure out a way around it.
@Keavy_Rain:
Let's accelerate the process by demanding a refund based on how late, as a percentage, the flight was. For instance, you're on a 3 hour flight, that sits for 6 hours on the tarmac. 6/3 = 2, so that's a full refund + 200% of the ticket price.
@SteverMan: No! I still have nightmares about eating it....but my grandmother LOVES it and makes it every Christmas.
@Keavy_Rain: Maybe. I think that's more credit than they deserve. I was on a Delta flight leaving JFK for Paris & most passengers were connecting to other flights in Europe & Africa. I know this becuase when we were stuck 6 hours on the tarmac in JFK, we conducted a passenger poll.
Delta insisted on holding the flight for 2 dozen passengers coming in from Miami. By the time they arrived (2 hours later), thunderstorms had rolled in, and we lost our place in line. 4 hours after that we departed, and the 75% of the plane who had connecting flights missed it.
We all got hotel rooms & food vouchers. No refund, but I'm sure a Paris airport hotel wasn't cheap. And they had to bump a lot of people from the next day's flights, so that's more hotels & possible flight vouchers. I can't imagine how Delta didn't lose a ton of $$ on it.
@floraposte: My vote is for sticking your finger down your throat while no one is looking and vomiting in the isle. That gets everyone off the plane.
![[www.coloursrun.com]](http://www.coloursrun.com/misc/articles/foods/lutefisk_pizza.JPG){kind=link}
![[www.coloursrun.com]](http://www.coloursrun.com/misc/articles/foods/lutefisk2.jpg){kind=link}
With the length of some of these delays, I can almost see a 6 hour delay getting an "Above and Beyond" tag...