Going home to Boston proved to be an excruciating ordeal for holiday travelers returning from paradise in Turks and Caicos on JetBlue Airlines.
Their flight, scheduled to depart on Dec. 28, was delayed 24 hours. To make matters worse, some of the passengers on Flight 754 said they were kicked out of the airport and left to fend for themselves overnight on the Caribbean island.
“To put people out on the streets like animals was definitely something I will never forget for the rest of my life,” a passenger identified as Marty told News 25 in Boston.
Marty said there were no hotel rooms available on the island that night.
“Just very unsettling, traumatizing experience you have three young kids all looking to you for an answer, a wife looking at you for an answer, for the first time as a husband and as a father and as a man, I had no idea how I was going to shelter my family for a night,” he said.
His travel agent was eventually able to find a small hotel room for his family.
In a statement, JetBlue blamed the delay on heavy air traffic control congestion, which forced Flight 754 to divert to Fort Lauderdale, where it experienced “extended holding.”
“The flight was delayed until the following day, safely arriving in Turks and Caicos to pick up our customers before completing its flight to Boston,” the statement continued, failing to mention Sunday’s flight was delayed an additional four hours.
Another passenger, identified as Brett, told the station JetBlue employees forced passengers out of the airport without providing any place for them to stay.
“We just kept saying where do you want us to go? What are we supposed to do? How are you kicking us to the street like dogs in a foreign country?” he said.
Brett said he eventually found an Airbnb for about a thousand dollars to accommodate 10 family members.
“It was in a horrible, sketchy area, the actual Airbnb itself was OK, but the area was like something out of a horror movie, wild dogs were chasing the cab as we were driving by like very sketchy neighborhood, and kids are freaking out like ‘What are we gonna do?’” he said.
Some passengers were provided cots in the airport when they couldn’t find a place to stay.
“This was far beyond a delay, this was sending people to the streets in the wee hours of the night and asking them to fend for themselves with no solutions,” Marty said.
The flight to Boston finally took off at 4:14 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 29.
JetBlue offered a “sincere apology for the inconvenience.”
“While the delay was created by circumstances beyond JetBlue’s control, we understand the impact this disruption had on our customers’ plans,” the statement read. “Given that, we’ve provided instructions for affected customers to submit reimbursement requests for eligible out-of-pocket expenses in line with our Customer Service Plan. Additionally, as a gesture of goodwill, we’ve issued $200 in travel credit for future JetBlue flights.”
Ironically, JetBlue was fined $2 million for “chronic delays” by the Department of Transportation just one day before the delayed flight to Boston.
JetBlue claims it has invested tens of millions of dollars attempting to minimize delays, particularly those caused by air traffic control.
