A Horrible Trip Home with JetBlue – A Complaint

A 23 hour flight from London to Atlanta that was suppose to take 4.5 hours.

I could start by saying that all the JetBlue employees I encountered were helpful and courteous, but they were hampered by ridiculous corporate rules, making my trip extremely painful.

I recently booked a one-way trip to London because I had an open ended trip and did not know my return date. A few days before heading back home, I booked a return flight from London to New York on JetBlue, continuing to Atlanta, also on JetBlue. My flight was supposed to leave Heathrow Terminal 2 at 7:45 AM. I got up at 4:00 AM to catch the shuttle from my Radisson Blu hotel, 15 minutes away from Heathrow.

My problems started early. The hotel had several shuttle companies, but the screens in the lobby only offered Uber rides. I mistakenly bought an Uber ticket, thinking it was for the shuttle. When the shuttle arrived, the driver refused my ticket. After some confusion, I finally got an Uber ride to Terminal 2.

On the way, I received a text from JetBlue informing me that my flight was delayed to 9:45 AM. At the check-in desk, I was told it was further delayed to 10:25 AM due to mechanical problems. I was in line with a young Palestinian man. We both happened to be traveling to Atlanta. The head desk person suggested a flight to Boston at 8:15 AM, but we may have to wait six hours for a connecting flight to Atlanta. She couldn’t book us on another airline, so we had to decide quickly. We both chose the Boston flight, knowing we’d lose any delay compensation.

We landed in Boston at 12:15 PM, cleared customs, and went to the JetBlue help desk hoping that would put us on an earlier flight. They would not put us on another airline’s flight, only a JetBlue flight. Yet, they did not have another one till 6 hours later. As compensation, they gave us $24 each in food vouchers, but most places at Logan didn’t accept them. We ended up eating at Wahlburgers. The vouchers did not even cover the cost of the airport food.

While we sat and ate, the young Palestinian man shared his experiences growing up in Gaza and the impact of the war on his family. It was a sobering conversation.

Finally, we boarded our flight to Atlanta. We landed 20 minutes early, but JetBlue didn’t have a dedicated gate. They share one with another airline, and that airline had a plane at the gate. So we waited 40 minutes on the tarmac before deplaning. By the time I got home, it was 10:30 PM, and I had been traveling for 23 hours.

The flights were fine, and the service was okay, but having to wait for six hours because of some ridiculous rule when they could have connected us with any number of flights that left Boston and went to Atlanta. Maybe that is now a standard rule for airlines not to book you on another airline, but it made my day interminable. Plus the fact that there was no compensation except some vouchers which did not even cover the cost of the food, and the 40-minute wait on the tarmac just convinced me that I will never fly JetBlue again unless I absolutely have no other choice.