Jet Blue goes way off course in getting me home
December 4th, 2008
Yeah, I know this has nothing to do with cell phone radio, but we’ll connect it all under the banner of citizen journalism.
Today i was flying home from JFK via Long Beach California on their flight 215. Midway through the flight after the captain announced they were having trouble a few times with pressurization, another announcement came over the speaker after 3 hours in the air that we needed to land in Rapid City South Dakota as a precaution.
As annoying as this was generally, my geographical obsessions kicked in a bit I wondered how we also drifted so far north. Take a look at this normal aviation flight map that shows the track between New York and LA:
We should have been flying over Kansas, not South Dakota.
What gives Jet Blue? I and a bunch of annoyed fellow travelers want to know why we were two states off track from a straight shot to LA. We could have been to Denver by that time, and the fact that we flew around for 45 minutes just to lighten the weight of fuel seems a bit odd.
I pulled out of the circus this time, am staying the night in Rapid City tonight. I’ll fly home to PDX on Frontier tomorrow AM. ironically, I’ll have to fly due south to Denver first.
Jet Blue, we want you to respond to this and tell us what you are going to do to make us whole. I was told the entire $350 I have to pay to get home is under question. It is costing me more to get home safely and HONESTLY, when it is customary to be made whole by the airline in this case.
December 5th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I just realized that a lot of people might not be able to tell Kansas apart from South Dakota. So I apologize to those who went to public schools after the 1980s who will find this map irrelevant without more stars and words.
Oops, there I go being a smart alec again.
Anyway, Jet Blue just sent me and all my fellow passengers a full round-trip set of vouchers. Thanks Jet Blue! The only thing possibly missing is full disclosure on why we drifted so far north, but you can consider me pretty much bought off at this point.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Hi Andrew,
Sorry for the diversion, though I’m glad we were able to reach out to those customers effected with compensation. You asked for some information on why you ended up so far North, and I’d be happy to provide that for you.
There are several reasons why planes traveling East-West take what appears to be an ‘arching’ route to the North. The first being the simple reason that on a globe, the quickest route isn’t the straight line you’d see on a 2-dimensional map. The second, and probably most applicable reason the route your plane was on differed from the route you’ve posted is purely seasonal.
In the winter, the jet stream over the Rockies causes some pretty impressive head-winds for West bound flights. To deal with this, pilots will use a great circle route flying North to avoid the wind. It’s actually not uncommon to see Boston to San Diego flights over Canada. It may seem like an unnecessary path, but actually ends up being the quickest, most efficient way for us to get our customers to their destinations (usually).
I hope I was able to answer your remaining question, and thank you again for your understanding.
December 8th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Thanks. You guys are the greatest for following up like this.
Please pass on to your pilots to please inform the passengers in a similar way. Many people like me who only know enough to be dangerous were all wondering the same thing on that flight, and there was a sense that we were not getting full disclosure at the time.