On Monday night, dozens of JetBlue passengers were left sitting on an idle plane at Worcester Airport in Massachusetts after the airport staff left for the evening.
Not only did this happen, but one passenger expressed she’s also had issues flying to and from Worcester Airport via JetBlue before, as she was traveling to New York City on a business trip over the weekend.
The lack of airline staffing is what she claims appeared to be the main problem.
The plane’s flight records show it landed outside the city of Worcester at 12:15 a.m. but didn’t park at the gate until 45 minutes later at 1 a.m.
“It was silence, then the pilot said, ‘I have something embarrassing to tell you guys — there is nobody to get you off the flight,'” stated Sabrina Ruelle on Tuesday to WCVB. “They had no staff available to get us off the airplane!”
Then police were called to solve the matter at hand.
Ruelle stated, “The state police were there, and they were going to have to evacuate us, but then they got a hold of a JetBlue manager and had to have him drive from his house to the airport to let us off the airplane,”
Ruelle had her 6-month-old son waiting at home and began to sympathize for all the other parents on the plane.
“I saw this one woman who was feeding her baby before we got on the flight,” Ruelle said. “You could tell they were already exhausted, and they were stuck on that flight the whole time, and the baby was crying.”
Jetblue released the following statement on Monday, “We are working with our business partner who operates our ground team in Worcester to determine why a crew member was not in place at the jet bridge to ensure this remains an isolated incident.”
“Our records show JetBlue passengers flight 676 Monday were required to wait 45 minutes to deplane after landing. While we comply with all DOT regulations in the event of a tarmac delay, we know any delay is a frustrating situation and apologize for the wait.”
Ruelle said she had a similar incident happen on Sunday as her JetBlue flight was delayed 5 hours in Worcester since the airline didn’t have enough staff available.
According to flight records from Sunday, the plane was supposed to leave Worcester at 7am and didn’t take off until right before noon for what is only a 32-minute flight to New York City.
A spokesperson from JetBlue told WCVB that Sunday’s delay was due to weather conditions from Saturday’s winter storm, as flight were canceled and therefore had many of their crew members not on schedule.
