Delays Hold JetBlue Flyers 'Hostage' At JFK

QUEENS, NY — Lost luggage. Hours on the tarmac. Panic attacks. That's just some of what Jet Blue passengers at John F. Kennedy International Airport said they endured on Sunday night.

The meltdown unfolded after a major nor'easter snowstorm pummeled New York this weekend, grounding hundreds of flights region-wide on Friday and Saturday.

Chaos intensified on Sunday, as storm recovery — reportedly coupled with staff shortages — left dozens of JetBlue flights sitting on the JFK tarmac for hours.

"After a 2 hour delay, we’ve been stuck on the tarmac at JFK for 2.5 hours and have been told there’s no timeline on when we can get off. So far, many screaming children and one passenger had a panic attack," tweeted one customer.

At about 10:15 p.m. there were nearly 20 flights waiting on the tarmac for a gate, aviation expert Jason Rabinowitz said, showing air traffic maps with a pileup of airplanes.

The backup got so intense, Rabinowitz said, that a handful of flights were rerouted to Newark International Airport; some customers said they were then almost stranded in New Jersey.

"They gave us one bus to JFK" for an entire flight's worth of people, tweeted one customer, who landed at Newark after four hours of delays. One couple, who were supposed to land in JFK, were reportedly re-booked on separate JetBlue flights: one landing at JFK, and the other at Newark.

Inside JFK, though, the situation was not any better. Hundreds of passengers waited for hours as their flights were repeatedly delayed, while others were stuck at the airport waiting for their bags, social media posts show.

"Seven delays last night until finally canceling the flight at 3:30 a.m.," tweeted one customer, whose re-booked Monday flight was recently delayed another three hours (the airline is still contending with over 150 delays and cancellations as of Monday afternoon, according to FlightAware).

Another traveler said that their flight was delayed 11 times before getting cancelled at 3 a.m. "with no explanation. Now booked on another delayed flight," the person tweeted on Monday after spending 18 hours at JFK.

A third customer, who said waiting at JFK felt like being kept "hostage," is convinced that JetBlue chose to delay flights instead of cancelling and paying for customer's hotels.

"It's so disorganized and we can't leave [because] who knows where our luggage is," the traveler tweeted alongside a video of bags strewn throughout the terminal.

In a statement to Patch, JetBlue cited storm recovery as one of the "number of conditions" that slowed operations down at JFK, but The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the airport, attributed the delays to staffing issues at Jet Blue, NY1 reported.

Rabinowitz, echoed this sentiment, writing that the "meltdown" happened because JetBlue was short staffed and couldn't manage on-the-ground operations — like clearing snow from the gates, prompting hours of tarmac delays.

"It normally takes a few days to fully recover when a storm of this size significantly impacts our two largest markets of New York and Boston. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and we are working to get them on their way as quickly as possible," JetBlue told Patch in a statement, adding that as of Monday "We have made good progress in ramping up operations in Boston, LaGuardia and Newark."

At JFK, though, the more than 30 percent of JetBlue's flights are delayed, with an additional 13 percent canceled as of Monday afternoon, FlightAware data shows.