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Taken 14 February 2007 from Boston, MA (Boston City Heliport) - JBC to Oakland, CA (Metropolitan Oakland International Airport) - OAK

My JetBlue flight (#477 from Boston to Oakland) last night was cancelled due to unavailability of a flight crew, and no JetBlue flights to Oakland are available until Sunday (3.5 days later). I understand that the bad weather played a role in the cancellation, but I think there were also some specific issues that are not weather-related:

1) JetBlue does not rebook passengers onto other airlines. I did not know this before yesterday, but it will definitely make me reconsider using JB on future occasions. I've often been rebooked onto other airlines when traveling with other carriers, and I've always managed to get to my destination with a delay of less than 12 hours.

2) Airport representatives at Logan airport held the flight for 4 hours past the originally scheduled departure time before cancelling it (at 11:45p). During that entire time, they were very friendly and courteous, but also unable or unwilling to provide any information about the probability of whether a crew would be found and whether the flight would actually depart. I don't know how crew scheduling works, but it does seem quite odd that it would take 4 hours to figure this out.

3) JetBlue offered full refunds, but no compensation to travellers for the cancellation. There was no offer of housing for stranded passengers, and no offer of even the slightest discount on future flights.

Relative to the concerns above, I was relatively fortunate in that I live in Boston and have "only" lost a vacation. However, there were numerous travellers on my flight who had no housing options in Boston and who also had important work- or family-related concerns associated with this flight. If we had been given information earlier about the likelihood of reaching Oakland, at least they could have purchased flights on other carriers or arranged to get home or to a hotel.

In summary, I've been very happy with JetBlue in the past, but I'm extremely disappointed with how the situation was handled yesterday. In particular, the seeming impossibility of JetBlue getting me to my destination within a reasonable amount of time (24 hours) is a serious deterrent to my using JetBlue in the future, because it suggests that if anything goes wrong, I could be stranded for several days. Thus, I would only be confident about using JB if the trip were of relatively little importance to me (i.e., if I wouldn't mind cancelling it altogether at the last moment and finding housing at my own expense).