JetBlue Is Getting Crushed By The Weather, Stopping Nearly All Flights From NYC And Boston
The area has been slammed by bad weather over the past few days: A snowstorm on Thursday and Friday, followed by icing conditions during the weekend, rainy weather today, and the polar vortex that's expected to bring extremely cold temperatures on Tuesday.
JetBlue has been especially hard hit, since New York's JFK International is its home airport.
It has already cancelled nearly half of its flights scheduled for today, according to FlightAware.com.
Now that it's stopping nearly all flights into and out of JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, and Boston until 10 a.m., that number is bound to rise.
Meanwhile, JetBlue hasn't fully recovered from the flights it cancelled over the weekend: It still has customers stuck in Barbados and the Cayman Islands, some of whom may not get home for a week.
The fact that new FAA rules, limiting the number of consecutive hours pilots can fly, went into effect on Saturday isn't helping - that makes it harder to schedule extra flights to get people home and planes and crew in position.
The nearly 24-hour long stop should give JetBlue a chance to catch up. In a blog post, it said "This plan allows for 17 hours of rest for crews, and time for Tech Ops to service the aircraft," and that it "intend[s] to be fully operational by 3 p.m. ET on Tuesday."
Passengers who had tickets for cancelled flights can rebook or request a refund.