JetBlue apologizes after passengers stranded

“The hope is that we can reposition our aircraft for smooth operations (Friday),” added the spokeswoman, Betsy Talton.

Southwest Airlines reported delays in Philadelphia but normal service at most other points.

“The weather has departed. Our operations are back on track,” said Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King. The airline canceled nearly 1,000 flights earlier in the previous two days.

UAL Corp.’s United Airlines reported an unspecified number of cancellations at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and Dulles International Airport outside Washington. The same airports were the scene of many of United’s 2,000 canceled flights earlier in the week.

United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said the airline planned to operate a normal schedule Friday.

‘It was horrific’
To Cheryl Chesner, 26, “unacceptable” was hardly the word for the 11 hours she said she and her husband, Seth, 27, spent trying to take a JetBlue flight to Aruba for their honeymoon.

“It was the worst. It was horrific,” she said. Baldwin said the Aruba flight, scheduled to leave at about 8 a.m. Wednesday, ultimately left late Wednesday night. But the Chesners went home to the Bronx.

While they waited to take off, John Farrell waited to arrive. His JetBlue flight from Fort Myers, Fla., landed at 10 a.m., but passengers didn’t get off until nearly 7 p.m., he said.

“You gotta realize the frustration — you can look out the window and you can see, there’s the gate, and if you let us off the plane, we can walk there,” said Farrell, 48, of Brooklyn.

Onboard the planes, snack foods wore out their welcome, bathrooms became unpleasant and cabins sweltered, passengers said.

“They had to open the door every 20 minutes just so we could get air,” said Sean Corrinet, 29, who was on a flight bound for Cancun, Mexico. It was delayed for at least eight hours, Baldwin said.

Baldwin said the jam arose as the airline sent outbound flights to the runway — so they could leave immediately if the weather let up — while incoming flights filled up the gates. The problem grew as some equipment used to tow planes away from gates froze to the ground, he said.

“We ended up with a gridlock situation where we couldn’t move any of the aircraft at the gates,” he said.

The airline stopped incoming flights by midafternoon, Baldwin said. By about 3 p.m., the airline gave up hope that the weather would allow the planes on the runway to take off and started arranging for buses to bring passengers back, he said. But the icy weather made that a slow process, he said.

“We need to make sure that it’s always safe for the customers,” he said.

JetBlue will review the day’s events to determine whether it could have handled the storm differently and how to prevent similar problems from arising again, Baldwin said.