JetBlue fined $90K for 2.5 hour gate delay infraction
Skift Take
JetBlue's 2007 string of delays have gone into business history books as one of the biggest corporate PR disasters. Clearly, the lesson here is more nuanced: over communication, way better than under comunication.
JetBlue Airways Corp. was fined $90,000 by the U.S. Transportation Department for failing to tell passengers during a 2 1/2-hour delay they could get off the plane as allowed under a 2010 federal rule.
Passengers at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport weren’t told they could leave the plane as it sat at the gate with the door open on March 3, awaiting departure to San Francisco, the department said in an e-mailed statement.
The fine was the second ever issued by the department in connection with an April 2010 rule, expanded in 2011, that fines carriers that don’t give passengers the option of getting off planes stuck on tarmacs. AMR Corp.’s Eagle unit was fined $900,000 in November 2011 for Chicago O’Hare tarmac delays over the U.S. Memorial Day holiday weekend that year.
Part of the rule states that if passengers have an opportunity to leave a stalled flight, such as when the plane is at the gate and the door is open, they must be advised 30 minutes after the scheduled departure time and every 30 minutes a
