I know the FA’s & pilots that yelled at Pax (guests in VA speak) wasn’t cool. But you can’t regulate customer service, or common sense. :)

They sat in a tube for how many hours after landing in NY? I would much rather be in the terminal calling friends/family to come get me then hearing FA’s screaming at the pax (or the guests as VA refers to them).

http://www.virginamerica.com/va/news.do

An apology to our travelers….

On behalf of everyone at Virgin America, we wish to apologize for the experience of guests on Flight 404 from Los Angeles International Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York (LAX-JFK), which was diverted on Saturday, March 13. The severe weather conditions, the effective closure of JFK, and the fact that we are not equipped to handle flights at Stewart International Airport created a difficult situation, but ultimately, it is our responsibility to ensure that our guests are handled with the care and respect that they deserve when they buy a ticket on our airline.

We pride ourselves on putting the well-being of our travelers first and making sure that, in stressful situations, we put our guests at ease. We failed this on Flight 404. After an internal review, I contacted all the guests onboard beginning Sunday evening to apologize for their experience, refund their flights in full, and extend future flight credits.

Again, our apology to all our travelers — we promise to do everything we can to restore your faith in us.

David Cush
CEO, Virgin America

Facts about Flight 404:
On Saturday, March 13 2010, Virgin America Flight 404 from LAX-JFK diverted to Stewart International Airport (SWF), as JFK was effectively closed for periods of time due to severe weather and incredibly high winds in excess of aircraft capabilities.
With deteriorating weather and fuel needs due to the aircraft circling for an extended period of time awaiting arrival clearance at JFK, the decision was made to divert into SWF.
Flight 404 was held at SWF for 4.5 hours, during which time guests had the option to leave the aircraft. Twenty of the 126 guests onboard chose to do so.
Five cases of water were delivered to the flight at SWF.
Virgin America does not have ground staff at SWF, so we are thankful to our colleagues at JetBlue, who assisted us after the diversion – as is custom in such situations.
We have fully complied with all existing or under-consideration Department of Transportation (DOT) rulings, and will provide DOT with a trip report corroborating these facts.

1. I think you’re missing my point. As a consumer, I do not have a direct interface with the airport, with the FAA, etc. I do have one with the airlines. Airlines have to take responsibility for negotiating with airports etc, they cannot disclaim control and tell me to go talk to a faceless organization. Whether they like it or not, airlines are the face of the travel industry, and they will always get all the blame (and rare moments of glory). Also, I do think airlines have more control of the delay problem than they like to let on.

I get it, but I was thinking more along the lines of regulation. Airlines can’t control the fact that they have to physically put the airplane in line, for example, so there’s nothing they can do about it. If Kate and others focused on getting the FAA to change that policy, then I would be behind it. But yes, from a customer point of view, the airline is absolutely the one who will receive the complaints, and they need to understand that. But it doesn’t mean they can fix it.

2. Are you sure about that? I think slots are only counted per day, not per hour. I know for a fact that a few years ago, LGA had 46+ departures scheduled from 3-7pm, but only 36 or 41 slots (I don’t recall the exact number). It was guaranteed that a few flights would get delayed a few hours. I’ll stand corrected if this has been rectified, but it doesn’t seem to be. The same problem is anecdotally present at JFK too – the evening rush after 5pm seems to be caused by overscheduling during that evening bank of flights. It evens out later in the evening.

I wonder if you’re thinking about the old AIR-21 rules that exempted smaller airplanes from having to abide by slots. This was supposed to encourage airlines to fly to smaller cities, but instead, it ended up being an absolutely nightmare with pure gridlock above and beyond capacity by far. That, thankfully, was fixed. As far as I know, slots are hourly at JFK and Newark. In fact, JFK only had slots during the afternoon rush at one point. If there is still consensus that too many flights are being scheduled, then all they have to do is reduce the number of slots. I don’t know if that’s the case or not, so I’ll leave it to the experts.

4. Agree in principle. However, the freedom to change is usually only made available in severe delays, not just routine 2 hour delays. And, to the point you make below, airlines don’t have visibility into their operations at that level (or don’t make it visible to their front-line staff) to give you this info at the gate in a timely manner.

I think we are talking about severe delays. This isn’t a 2 hour delay we’re talking about, but rather a 2 hour ramp delay. If that happens, the total delay is likely to be much worse because there’s something awful going on there. But still, I think we agree on the idea here.

5. I agree, you can’t solve the capacity issue immediately. It is a longer-range fleet planning exercise, and the airlines have made a choice to go with smaller aircraft more frequently. I think the consolidation opportunity exists in other markets too, mostly hub-to-hub flying. ORD-LGA, DFW-LAX, IAD-SFO you will see flights compressed against one another, because there is customer demand at that time, and they only have those planes to work with.

I agree that there are opportunities on hub to hub flying and even to some larger spokes. Man, I remember the days where we would schedule wingtip flights on routes at America West from Phoenix to LA (there were always two noon flights back home). There were even banks where three flights left at the same time between Phoenix and Vegas. Those are gone now, but I do wonder how much this could really help overall.

I still maintain my pet peeve, and in this example the airline frankly was dishonest. The gate staff suspected there were not going to operate that aircraft LGA-ATL. Yet they kept showing a time, even called boarding for the flight, and then immediately after that cancelled it. 10 minutes later that same aircraft, gate, (and crew, I believe) were reassigned to FLL. I know the gate staff had a suspicion but officially they were not to know and not to say anything. They dutifully announced boarding, followed by a cancellation, with no explanation. The airline knew they wanted that plane to go to FLL and banked on a certain percentage of people going to ATL going home in despair if they cancelled. That’s just not right.

There are a lot of things that could have been going on there. The gate staff likely knew nothing, though they may have had suspicions. These calls are made by the ops folks, and they just get the call at the podium and do as they’re told. Send me a note at cf@crankyflier.com with specific flight details and I’ll see if I can get the airline to give us a breakdown on what actually happened. I think that might be really interesting.

1. Why the airlines? You can argue many of the factors are out of their hands, but it has to be the airlines, they are the ones with who we exchange money for services. No-one else is a counterparty to individual travelers.
don’t see how that makes sense. If something is out of the control of the airlines, how are they supposed to fix it?

I think you’re missing my point. As a consumer, I do not have a direct interface with the airport, with the FAA, etc. I do have one with the airlines. Airlines have to take responsibility for negotiating with airports etc, they cannot disclaim control and tell me to go talk to a faceless organization. Whether they like it or not, airlines are the face of the travel industry, and they will always get all the blame (and rare moments of glory). Also, I do think airlines have more control of the delay problem than they like to let on.

2. Why not airports and the DOT? Airports have slots, but airlines overschedule the slots. Current slot controls don’t have enough teeth. On a perfect day, at a slot-controlled airport, it is known and guaranteed that some flights will be late due to overscheduling. Let us enforce them, *with fines*, and hopefully all the airlines, airports and apologists will not construct new excuses.
That is absolutely not true. Where airports have slot controls, there is no overscheduling of slots. The airlines only schedule the number of flights they are allowed to schedule. If that number is above the true airport capacity, then slots should be adjusted to the right number.

Are you sure about that? I think slots are only counted per day, not per hour. I know for a fact that a few years ago, LGA had 46+ departures scheduled from 3-7pm, but only 36 or 41 slots (I don’t recall the exact number). It was guaranteed that a few flights would get delayed a few hours. I’ll stand corrected if this has been rectified, but it doesn’t seem to be. The same problem is anecdotally present at JFK too – the evening rush after 5pm seems to be caused by overscheduling during that evening bank of flights. It evens out later in the evening.

4. Too many 2+ hour delayed flights will get canceled also. Personally I think 2 hours is too much also. Yes I want to get to my destination. But I don’t want to have to spend 6 hours on a plane to go LGA-ORD. [Which is legal today, between a 3 hour delay, 2.5 hour actual flying time, and possible circling and gate delays on arrival]. 10 years ago, it used to take 1:45 of flying time. Now airlines have overloaded the ATC system, and they bitch about it.
You may think a 2+ hour delay is bad, but there are plenty of people who would rather get to their destination even if it involves a 2 hour delay. It’s better than not getting there at all. Here’s the thing. When the weather gets really bad at congested airports (and that’s when these incidents are more likely to happen), then airlines nearly always allow customers to change their plans without a fee. I would love to see an airline announce at the gate that long delays are likely so then you can simply walk away because you don’t want to sit on the ground for 2 hours while everyone else can still get to their destination.

Agree in principle. However, the freedom to change is usually only made available in severe delays, not just routine 2 hour delays. And, to the point you make below, airlines don’t have visibility into their operations at that level (or don’t make it visible to their front-line staff) to give you this info at the gate in a timely manner.

5. People want frequency. Yes but within reason. Airlines have made it absurd. We don’t need so many flights DFW-LGA for ‘travelers’ convenience’. No traveler would object if the 3:10, 3:40 and 4:35 were consolidated into 2 flights. Airlines will very likely save money on operating 2 bigger flights instead of 3 smaller ones. I will have to make my ‘business travel’ schedule fit the airlines schedules (and whims) today. I will adjust, especially if my arrival time is more predictable. My employer will be happy to adjust if fares are cheaper. The issue is, airlines have chosen smaller planes to have more flexibility, and many don’t have bigger planes to fly. They can’t fix this overnight, but there are plenty of aircraft of all shapes and sizes parked in the desert.
Let’s look further at your example. Two of those flights are operated by 140 seat MD-80s and the other is operated by a 160 seat 737-800. So that’s 440 seats total. Though a 767 technically can land at LaGuardia, I think it’s highly unlikely that they would use that plane since it focuses more on international. That leaves the 188 seat 757, so with two flights, that’s 376 seats, or a 15% cut. It’s not an easy thing to fix, though this might be an ideal place to actually cut one flight. Where else could you do it, however?

I agree, you can’t solve the capacity issue immediately. It is a longer-range fleet planning exercise, and the airlines have made a choice to go with smaller aircraft more frequently. I think the consolidation opportunity exists in other markets too, mostly hub-to-hub flying. ORD-LGA, DFW-LAX, IAD-SFO you will see flights compressed against one another, because there is customer demand at that time, and they only have those planes to work with.

PS. Personally, my pet peeve is not being stuck on the tarmac. I’ve been lucky enough that it’s only happened twice in about 10 years for me. It’s that while I am still in the terminal, airlines keep pushing flights out, and then cancelling them after stringing us along. In one of the February snowstorms, I watched LGA-ATL flights get delayed, changed, cancelled, all day. Eventually, only 2 of the flights scheduled from 3:00-9:00 actually operated but you only would have learned that as the evening wore on.
You act as if the airlines should know that the flights won’t operate, but weather is not the easiest thing to predict. The airlines want to operate as many flights as they can in order to get people, planes, and crews to where they need to be, but that’s not always possible. Snow may have been expected to let up but it didn’t. There are a million moving parts. The only alternative is just to cancel outright and that’s not ideal for most.

I still maintain my pet peeve, and in this example the airline frankly was dishonest. The gate staff suspected there were not going to operate that aircraft LGA-ATL. Yet they kept showing a time, even called boarding for the flight, and then immediately after that cancelled it. 10 minutes later that same aircraft, gate, (and crew, I believe) were reassigned to FLL. I know the gate staff had a suspicion but officially they were not to know and not to say anything. They dutifully announced boarding, followed by a cancellation, with no explanation. The airline knew they wanted that plane to go to FLL and banked on a certain percentage of people going to ATL going home in despair if they cancelled. That’s just not right.

If there is a 10% change a flight you push now will be stuck on the runway for 3+ hours, incurring an exorbitant fine, then you can cancel 10 flights even though only one of those 10 would have potentially been problematic. As the fine grows, the incentive to cancel all ten rather than risk one tarmac sit becomes even stronger. Sure enough that’s exactly what is happening. Hanni 0 Basic Economics 1.

“There’s been no national poll saying that a majority of Americans think the 3-hour rule is an overreaction. ”

I’ll agree with that. Hanni is representative of lead-by-poll. This cavewoman has led the masses with cries of DELAY=BAD!!! KILL AIRLINES=GOOD!!! with no understanding of the implications of her actions. And why should she? It doesn’t matter to her or the people polled; details are boring. Reality is hard. People don’t want to be bothered with the real issue. It’s easier to blame the evil airlines.