JetBlue Airways Corp. and American Airlines face a U.S. Transportation Department probe after passengers were stranded on planes for as long as 7 1/2 hours when they were routed to Connecticut during a snowstorm.
The flights were among 23 diverted to Hartford’s Bradley International Airport on Saturday because of the storm and periodic equipment failures at two New York-area airports. Six were flown by JetBlue, which wouldn’t say how long any of its jets were stuck on the tarmac.
The Transportation Department will determine whether the airlines violated a federal rule requiring that passengers be allowed to leave stopped planes after three hours or face fines as high as $27,500 a customer. As many as 1,500 travelers were marooned at the airport overnight.
“In some ways, it doesn’t matter what the pilots do in that situation because there’s not a whole lot they can control when they’re diverted,” Les Westbrooks, a former American Airlines pilot who now teaches at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said in an interview. “You can’t let people off without help from someone on the outside.”
U.S. officials are looking at JetBlue Flight 504 and “several other” flights in which passengers may have been stranded more than three hours, the Transportation Department said in a statement Monday. The Federal Aviation Administration said it is conducting a “comprehensive review” of how the air-traffic system responded to the inclement weather.
