Police Called to Quell "Unruly Crowd" at JFK Delta Terminal

This is why I never travel during holidays. Not that flying anywhere is fun at any time.

insanity at all airports during the xmas holiday?

no way i dont believe it!

This article was written by tweets.

In a cruel twist of irony I am stuck in Toronto trying to flack back to NYC.

Flight cancellations due to weather suck. I've waited more than a day at the airport before, and no airline will promise you anything. Not JetBlue, not BA, no major commercial airline, however much you've paid for the ticket.

I can't comment on how this past week has been at any airport, as I've vowed never to fly the week of Christmas again, but I will say that Delta has generally been courteous and decent during delays. I haven't come across a pissy customer service person when speaking to them like human beings. Paying attention to broadcasts also help.

The security lines at JFK's Delta terminal are often a mess, even on a normal day. This is a TSA staffing issue, is it not? Delta baggage check and ticketing are usually pretty fast and easy. Arriving the advised 2-3 hours prior to your flight should get you through the mess, albeit stressed.

EWR delays are no better. They have you board "on time" and then you get to sit on the tarmac and become delayed for 3 hours there. (It's happened to me on SAS, Continental, and USAir at EWR.) I've once boarded, sat on tarmac for 2 hours, de-boarded, and re-boarded to sit and wait for crews to de-ice the plane. Couldn't they have done this before we re-boarded? *sigh*

LGA delays can be all day depending where you're flying to. Spirit Air will be delayed 90% for over 1.5 hours if you don't get on an AM flight. But hey, you get what you pay for here, which is sometimes a $40 R/T flight to Ft. Lauderdale, Detroit or Myrtle Beach, with no customer service. It's the CTown bus with wings, and nearly as unsafe, I'm sure.

NYC is one of the highest air traffic cities, and if I recall correctly, more than 40% of flights are delayed. (I read somewhere that US air traffic control and routes haven't been updated in decades leading to infrastructure failure.) Compounded with fully booked holiday flights, and bad weather, flying can be a nightmare. My working solution for the past 4 years: Enjoy NYC Christmas (or spend it with friends/family close enough to visit by train) and save up your vacation days for another long weekend so you don't waste your money and time in the airport.

I've had the most bad experiences with Delta so I like to avoid them, but given the state of the industry, it's dumb to swear any airline off. It's hard to blame the weather on Delta, but they seem to have gone to extreme measures in understaffing their terminal when they should anticipate the need for dozens of extra personnel (with thousands of people stranded in NY because of the blizzard and zero extra seats to make up the difference during the busy season).

However, it's also dumb to bitch and moan about how airlines are terrible when they have clearly gone through very tough times. Remember the $12 billion dollar bailout after 9/11? I was as mad as anyone else about that, but $12 billion is now unfortunately a joke and hardly seems like a hand out to shitty companies doing shitty business (ehem, financial institutions).

Although Sully is a mythical hero based on a 1 in a million occurrence of crash landing a plane in a populated river, he's got a point when he says that he makes 40% less than he used to. We the consumers have demanded more and more for less and less, and it's fairly natural that the current state of affairs is now the status quo.

Strand me in JFK or LAX for 6 hours and I'll change my mentality, but the fact remains that my biggest pet peave when it comes to flying is fat people spilling over into my seat. The American public seems to have gotten consistently fatter than the airline industry has gotten consistently shittier.

ANYONE who flies these days is a sheep or a fool. These airports treat people like GARBAGE and if you DARE say word one about it, you are told YOU are the problem and then threatened. Screw em, let them go out of business.

I refuse to fly anymore.

How do you propose getting anywhere more than 500 miles away? Conestoga wagon?

also on amtrak you can bring your own booze.

Religious holidays: stampedes, fights, violent homicide and chain reaction collisions. Next time I see a baby in a manger, I'm snuffing the little bastard.

Flew out of JFK Terminal 4 this AM (Virgin America). Calm and hardly any people at all.

T4 is much larger and more modern. Delta's setup has about twice as many gates and flights as it was originally built for. Even on a regular day it can be borderline chaos.

i am looking fwd to my holiday flights. it's a huge rush. it's festive. crankin tunes on my mp3. cocktail in the airport lounge. i love leaving NYC and i always love the return.

pmckcon

This is why traveling by air is like going to jail for a day.

The best mode of travel is by train or car, unfortunately it's not the fastest way around.

Yawn. Everyone has a horror story about a particular airline sucking.

I go out of my way to avoid traveling on big holidays. I don't really understand this lemming thing so many of you get into, but I figure a lot of people actually must enjoy it -- the crowding, the hassles, the delays, the noise, the crazies, the squalling brats, the inconvenience -- or they wouldn't do it. Possibly ordinary life is too soft and pleasant for them?

As for Delta, my only experience was bad enough to cause me to strictly avoid them forever.

Shipping your luggage by UPS or Fedex seems like an excellent idea and I don't understand why these companies haven't made more of an effort to facilitate this kind of business. Better still, though, travel light.

Not to rub it in or anything, but holidays make me even happier to be a native New Yorker. No traveling to see family. Oh fuck it, who am I kidding? I totally want to rub it in.

yes yes Delta is the worst

from now on I UPS my luggage to my destination

money well spent and insures against arriving in Fla

in Dec with no bathing trunks, LOL

Yes, Delta, especially when flying out of JFK, is awful. Out of the four times that I've been on a Delta flight, they've managed to misplace my luggage three times...

A friend was flying out Sunday night on Delta to Greenville, SC. His 7pm flight was canceled. He then went on a trail of tears of standby flights for the next day and half. Slept in the airport Sunday. Haven't reached him on phone yet, so who knows... Canceled flights suck.

what no comments about hipsters? here i'll try:

good luck flying back to OHIO for the holidays you hipster bitches. maybe ride your fixie there next time instead! ha! in your face!

Flight to ohio line all full of dudes hanging out doing track stands

Despite the fact that it will take 7 hours to travel what I could drive in 4.5 hours or fly in 2, I am so glad I'm taking Amtrak home for the holidays.

No gridlock getting out of the city or icy roads. No security lines. And I get to watch Season 5 of "The Office" without being told to turn off my electronic devices.

delta terminal is an absolute nightmare if you are flying international (esp. during the holidays) and/or checking in bags for any other domestic flights. also, the check in gate is the size of my bathroom. i suggest online check in and not to bring a lot of crap/gifst (gift cards anyone?).

This year I am traveling on Xmas Eve. It is my first "holiday travel" since mostly I just want to spend the Holidays in NYC. ANYHOW, I am terrified.

On the bright side, weather should be nice the rest of the week, at least in New York.

Damn. Nice knowing you, mate.

They need to simmer down. Everyone knows that airports will be busy. Just deal with it.

Delta stinks. They treat the paying passengers like dirt. If you fly using mileage they treat you like you're a felon. We are suffering because in our quest for the lowest fares, the give back was reasonable service. Fact of life.

If only there were long steel bands along the ground that could be used to transport cargo and people efficiently and cheaply between major cities in the Northeast, reducing the burden on airports for short distance flights...

If only Train travel didn't cost almost as much as flying; wasn't almost as frustrating, hectic, and plagued with delays; and didn't take longer.

That's my complaint; I can't understand why it costs so much money to take trains, and why they take so long to get from city to city. If you could hop on an Amtrak reliably and cheaply to Boston, Portland (ME), DC, Philly, etc. travel would be so much easier. Trains are such a pleasant and civil way to travel compared to the hassle of a Plane.

I go to DC about twice a month, and I take the Bolt Bus. It's definitely not as comfortable as the train, but it's hard to beat at the price of $20. The least expensive train ride I've ever gotten to DC was $72, and that didn't happen very often. Also, the bus is often quicker than the train and has free wireless.

It may cost as much, but you have bigger seats, electricity, and they don't make you take off your shoes!

NYC airports are always a zoo. I always fly out of Newark. The airport is more modern, more spacious, and people just seem to act less like animals at Newark than JFK or LGA. Good luck to the people trying to make a flight.

Are you kidding? The last three times I've flown into Newark at night, we've had to wait on the tarmac for more than an hour after landing every goddamn time - not because they don't actually have space for us at the gate, but because the airport employees are so fucking lazy that the night shift workers can't be bothered to go move the empty planes away from the gates. The last time, it was two hours on the tarmac on one of those tiny regional jets, full of screaming babies. The pilot was so angry he was cursing over the intercom. When we finally got into the airport, it was practically empty. None of those full gates were in use at all. The planes sitting in them had been there for hours. I hate to say it but when it comes to getting my blood pressure up Newark really is the worst. That and the cab drivers there don't even seem to know how to get to Manhattan.

Just curious what airlines you guys were on because I have never once been delayed at Newark on arrival and no more than 15 to 20 minutes on departure. Then again, I try to avoid flying in the late afternoon and early evening when delays have had all day to accumulate through the system. I almost always fly Continental but I have flown American and Jet Blue out of Newark in the last year.

All Continental, all landing after 9pm. Presumably by that time the majority of the Newark staff are gone. I don't really blame Continental for that at all, it clearly seems to be a Newark staffing issue.

I do blame Continental for that flight to Ireland a decade ago where the flight attendants' solution to the extremely loud, smelly, drunken Irishman on the night flight was to give him more and more and more alcohol until he was stumbling up and down the aisles. I think maybe they thought if they gave him enough booze he would pass out, but clearly they did not understand the Irish!

Newark is the only airport I've flown out of where I am guaranteed to sit on the tarmac for 2+ hours. Never been NOT delayed out of Newark, so it's left a sick taste in my mouth.

Newark is a pain in the ass to get to, but I found the bus links from Port Authority to be ok.

Best way is to take NJTransit from Penn right to the airport. It costs $15, but it's worth it.

Wow. A friend of mine just returned to NYC on Delta and had a terrible time. he won't shut up about it actually.

A similar situation developed at LAX on Sunday. My son, whose flight from ONT to JFK was among the hundreds of flights canceled in anticipation of the snowstorm, had been advised by Delta staff at ONT to go to LAX ($62 van ride), where he found a line that extended from the terminal outside (into the lovely 62 degree LA weather). While serenely waiting in line for 6-1/2 hours (a kindly Delta agent put him on that evenings redeye for JFK), police were summoned several times to calm the maddened crowd. Seems the problem was that Delta did not have sufficient staff present to provide information and updates to passengers.

As for thoughts that Delta "is the absolute WORST airline EVER," people with tickets on Jet Blue and other carriers are still waiting at LAX for flights home. I just think the American airline industry has sunk to the point where customer service no longer exists. Perhaps fliers like George Clooney, with millions of miles logged annually, can call a special line at their favorite airline and get personal service. You and I have to pay for our ticket, pay for our luggage, wait on interminable lines, be abused by customer service agents, crowd onto planes, sustain delays, wait for hours on tarmacs, arrive at our destination and wait again, look for our luggage only to find it didn't make it to our destination,.....

the employees at JFK are all low-skilled, uneducated, coarsely aggressive people with poor upbringings. of course they don't know anything about work efficiency nor customer service. that's actually a big detriment to quality of life in New York in general, where many blue-collar workers are uneducated, coarse individuals or just straight up ex convicts; more so than in other big cities imo.

I stand behind my comment based on my many horrible experiences with Delta, but completely agree that consumers have no voice when it comes to air travel.

I wouldn't say consumers have no voice. They can vote, with their wallet. But consumers are a finicky bunch. They'll say they'll never fly an airline again, yet if the offending airline happens to have a lower fare than the rest of the bunch, they'll take it. It has to be a particular harrowing experience for them to dump an airline entirely.

I understand not everyone can afford the take the other airlines, but you'll loose a lot more time & money if your flight is canceled or if you miss a connection because the airline sucks ass.

If there is a direct flight to a destination, yet a connecting flight is $50 less, Take the Direct Flight regardless .

This alone will save you the hassle.

Fuck me, I WISH taking an indirect flight were cheaper, but they're routinely a hundred bucks more than direct (and you get the bonus of missing your connecting flight and losing your luggage).

Great. Hopefully Jetblue has its shit together tomorrow!

I'm sure the papd got called in over the west palm beach flight, those people are the most obnoxious passengers I've ever experienced.

They probably need their insulin levels checked. Or thier adult diaper needs to be changed...

I love my family dearly, but I refuse to travel to see them at Christmas. What a nightmare.

Delta is the absolute WORST airline EVER.

Me thinks you a fool if you bought a ticket with them.

i hate traveling so much.

What's what you get for flying Delta. Serves you all right for chasing the cheapest fare, even if its $10 cheaper than AA or Jetblue.

On the contrary, the NYT article states that the passengers on the Haiti bound flight received lodging and food from Delta. This goes beyond customer services as weather caused delays do not require the airline to provide anything. This is just a bunch of unruly customers who chose a bad time to travel.

Sorry but this is an untrue statement. There are other airlines at jfk, they did not have a problem. ONLY DELTA. There were only 2 lines opened for screening and people were waiting for 4-5 hrs and missing there planes because they could not get thru security.

Remember only the truth can set you free so destroying the truth is giving tryanny greater life, and it is nothing but tryanny at the airports in the usa. Massive unAmerican tryanny.

it's a RECESSION!