9:40pm Boston just got smacked with another blizzard. MassPort has closed the airport “indefinitely;” it may open sometime after 3:00am EST. Inbound international flights being diverted to Montreal and points beyond.
9:42pm Pleas coming over the intercom now: “Anybody in the boarding area speak Greek? Any Greek? A little Greek?” No takers.
10:32pm JetBlue has pulled the snack carts off the planes into the lounge area. They’ve been ravaged. Ditto the pillows and blankets. Does not bode well.
1:08am Weds In line at the ticket counter with several dozen new friends. Next flight out is Thursday, unless Our Lady of the Standby comes through. Commencing vigorous tithing.
*nods off. inexplicably, dreams of bacon. *
4:51am JetBlue ticket counter opens.
5:23am Put on standby for today’s flights. Tithing continues. I’m #5 on the standby list. There appears to be a couple of dozen other folks who are also trying to get on the list.
8:20am The flight boards. They only clear the first four standbys. Crap. Looks like another day here doing the Tom Hanks thing.
8:23am Sweeeeeet! They did a physical check of the flight, and there’s one seat open. Thanking graces, etc. Hopefully the other folks will get on the evening flight.
12:15pm PST IFR touchdown at Oakland.
Overall, have to give the JetBlue gate folks pretty solid marks for dealing with a great many number of rude, tired, short-tempered customers (demands to have JetBlue materialize a $50MM plane in the middle of a snowstorm, etc.). The place where they fell down a little was on the communications aspects of the evolving situation. At one point in the evening, we were assured that since the inbound plane had arrived, everyone waiting at the gate would be able to get out when the airport opened, since “the plane is here and ready.” However, when the flight was cancelled around midnight (how can it be cancelled…the plane is right there?), it was not communicated as clearly as possible that an entire new set of rules were in place,requiring a completely different set of actions other than “just wait” which was the M.O. of the first couple of hours of the saga. Suggestion for them would be to have in place a FAQ, or decision tree, or the like clearly stating the different things that need to be done in each situation.
Glad to be home. Feeling for the folks who are still stuck, some apparently until Friday.