False Imprisonment

This happes too often, and you people just roll over and take it.

A 2 ½-hour JetBlue Airways flight bound from Fort Lauderdale to New York on Wednesday turned into a 25-hour odyssey that finally ended Thursday afternoon, as a chain of problems left 150 passengers staggered by the mind-boggling delay.

Flight 62's takeoff at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday was delayed for three hours. The jet departed, only to be diverted by bad weather to Atlantic City, N.J., where passengers stewed on the tarmac for four hours. At 12:30 a.m. Thursday, they were allowed off the plane. It would be another four hours until they finally were sent to a hotel for the night. The flight ultimately arrived at JFK International Airport at 3:21 p.m. Thursday.

This is not about the bullshit tricks the airlines play to pretend the have "on-time" departures. This is about holding people against their will in a situationatin no other industry could possible get away with.

Kahn said that upon landing around 8:30 p.m. passengers were told that buses would soon arrive to transfer them to JFK. The promised buses never came. Passengers ultimately took taxis at their own expense to a nearby hotel where JetBlue had secured rooms for the night, he said. The taxi fares will be reimbursed. For the remainder of the night, Khan and others went without food because nearby restaurants already had closed.

You're in a movie theater. The power goes out. Or the projector breaks. Or the heater kicks in and runs full blast until it's 120 degrees, whatever. Are you then forced to stay in that theater, by ushers and projectionists, with no food and no workable plumbing, until they get it all right and can complete the movie 6 or 15, or 25 hours later? Of course not. Tell me why the airlines are able to do this to its paying customers.

I'm telling you, if this happens to me, I am going to blow the door, go down the slide and walk out of there a hero to the rest of the fuselage captives.