FAA investigating JetBlue, American delays

{mosads}A sports writer for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper who was aboard one the flights en route to a Miami Dolphins NFL football game the flights described the delay in an article Sunday.

“JetBlue Flight 504 had been a perfectly normal flight right up until it wasn’t,” reporter Andrew Carter wrote. “And then it stayed that way — a strange, surreal experience that trapped passengers and the flight crew on board for nearly seven and a half hours amid one of the worst October snowstorms on record.”

In 2010, the Department of Transportation placed a three-hour limit on tarmac delays for domestic flights as part of an “Airline Passengers Bill of Rights.” Under the rule, airlines can be fined as much as $27,500 per passenger for a delay longer than three hours after an airplane is boarded and leaves its airport gate.

Carter, who wrote than there were about 150 on his flight, said the lengthy delay gave him time to learn about his fellow passengers, including a few who were fans of the team he was traveling to New Jersey to cover. 

“I learned the friendly woman in 8B was headed back from an island vacation with her friend,” he wrote. “I learned that the couple across the aisle were Dolphins fans.

“As if this hadn’t been a long enough season,” Carter said, in reference to the Dolphins’ winless record.