Several Planes stuck w/o gate for 7 hours or more at BDL

[BDL SLF]

Bradley airport JetBlue pilot sought help to get passengers off plane at Bradley Airport - Courant.com (http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-jet-blue-transcripts-1101-20111031,0,1307141.story)

So was it the airline's fault, the airport's fault (consensus thought in CT) or just one of those things? 23 flights had to divert to BDL during the big Nor'easter that has shut off power for millions....thoughts?

[ExXB]

I've seen speculation in the media and in other forums which suggest that JetBlue and/or American (for a PAR-JFK flight diverted to BDL) are going to get "big fines" for this.

I personally doubt this as the circumstances were clearly outside of the hands of the airline's themselves. The FAA obviously diverted too many flights to Hartford and in the case of AA they should have known that Customs facilities were not available.

However as the airlines are always wrong in these situations who knows what the DoT is going to do. While they do want to be seen as doing 'something' and 'protecting consumers' their ability to fine the airlines for tarmac delays has never been tested. I suspect that as the regulation that foresees fines for 'deceptive practices' in these circumstances could be successfully challenged in court, they are reluctant to risk it.

While the DoT crows that since they started threatening airlines with these fines the problem has mostly gone away. The industry contends that the problem has gone away because they now cancel many more flights.

Nobody wants to be stuck on an airplane for seven hours, but sometimes the alternate is worse.

In 2009 the Mrs. and I sat on a BA aircraft at Heathrow for six hours waiting for the plane to be de-iced (freak snow/ice storm on 21 Dec). They gave us refreshments and turned on the IFE, but eventually we got under way. It would have been much worse (for us) had they cancelled. There is no way we would have got to Vancouver for Christmas in these circumstances. Hated sitting there but it would have been much worse had they cancelled.