February 20, 2007

By now, you’ve all probably heard a number of horror stories concerning the JetBlue meltdown last week at JFK. As it turns out, a friend of mine, Los Angeles-based public relations executive Diana Bianchini, was on one of the delayed flights bound from JFK to the West Coast.

Here’s the email she sent me when she finally got off the plane ten hours after boarding her flight — right back at JFK:

I arrived at the airport at 6:30 a.m.; my flight was to leave at 9:05 a.m. We boarded the flight [around 5 p.m.]; and then they kept us on the plane for ten hours.

The airplane was in riot mode; people were everywhere, screaming, crying — mothers with babies, trapped with all of us on the plane — with no diapers.

We had only Terra Blue chips, water and soda, but that ran out; toilets overflowed; we could not get off. People were on the phone with their attorneys, people were yelling at each other, babies crying; it was really horrible.

We finally got back to the terminal at 1 a.m.

I then had to search for my luggage downstairs until 2:45 a.m.

I managed to book a flight on Continental, traveling the next morning at 8 a.m. I took a taxi over to the Continental terminal, only to sleep on the floor for a few hours before I got in line at 5:45 a.m. to check in for my 8 a.m. that routed me through Houston, and then on to LAX.

I was in a massive line, as you can imagine, and by the time I reached the counter, they told me I was too late for the flight…I gave up, grabbed a cab, and went back into Manhattan.

Next, I tried calling JetBlue, but their toll free number just gave out a recording that said they were not taking calls, and to call back — and then the connection was cut off.

That’s when Diana called me.

She was literally trapped in New York. No airline would — or could — book her home to California.

I thought I had a solution: use New York’s secret airport, Islip, out on Long Island.

I suggested she take the Long Island Railroad from Penn Station to the Ronkonkoma Station, then a five-minute cab ride to Macarthur Airport. There, Southwest was operating flights west.

A few hours later, I got an email from Diana. She had reached the airport easily, and Southwest had booked her on a flight from Long Island to Midway in Chicago, with a quick change of planes back to LAX. And she got home.

The moral to the story: when you’re beginning to feel like one of the stars in a remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, be a contrarian and think outside the box. Think alternate airports and alternate cities.

Heading to Washington, D.C.? Think Philadelphia or Baltimore.

Boston? Try Providence.

Is Chicago a mess? I love Mitchell field in Milwaukee.

And Oakland is almost always preferable to San Francisco — it’s close to the city, but a million miles away from the fog and the runway congestion of SFO.

Of course, it might not be a nonstop flight, but you stand a better chance of getting home…

For more on air travel, check out “Citizen Journalism and Flight Delays”.

Find out what America’s Best Alternate Airports are.