Hundreds of passengers were stranded and chaos erupted at New York’s JFK Airport on Sunday night due to JetBlue flight delays and cancellations.
Due to chaos some passengers even claimed that they were held “hostage” in the airport’s terminals overnight since JetBlue refused to cancel their flights until the last minute amid weather delays.
Aviation expert Jason Rabinowitz who witness the incident revealed that some 20 inbound flights were scattered on the tarmac — some for several hours — because they were unable to reach a gate.
The tracking site Flight Aware also showed that half a dozen flights were abruptly diverted to Newark Airport in New Jersey.
Some angry passengers took to social media to demand an explanation from JetBlue, with some saying they were provided vague updates from airline staff throughout the ordeal.
JetBlue for its part apologized to customers Monday over the delays, saying it often takes days to recover from a huge winter storm.
“After this weekend’s heavy snow and freezing temperatures in the northeast, we are focused on safely resuming our flight schedule,” a rep said.
“We have made good progress in ramping up operations in Boston, LaGuardia and Newark,” the rep added.
Moreover, the representative said JetBlue had combined flights Monday “to ease those constraints and are working to rebook customers.
“It normally takes a few days to fully recover when a storm of this size significantly impacts our two largest markets of New York and Boston, and our first priority continues to be restarting safely,” he said.
“We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and we are working to get them on their way as quickly as possible,” he added.
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