Few Delays, Cancellations In RI After Weekend Of Travel Headaches

WARWICK, RI — After a weekend of headaches for air travelers across the country, only a few flights into and out of Rhode Island were delayed on Monday.

As of about 11:30 a.m., just a handful of flights into and out of Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport were delayed or canceled. Check the arrivals or departures boards for the latest information about specific flights.

Many of the weekend delays at nearby Logan Airport in Boston and for travelers across the country were from JetBlue, which had about half of the Boston delays over the weekend.

"Over the past several days, severe weather in the southeast and multiple air traffic control delay programs have created significant impacts on the industry," a JetBlue spokesman said in a written statement. "We have unfortunately had to cancel flights this weekend, and today's cancellations will help us reset our operation and safely move our crews and aircraft back in to position."

Ed Baklor, head of JetBlue's Customer Care and Programs, also issued a statement last week, saying that operational problems at JetBlue are happening because flight attendants are refusing to accept assignments.

But Transport Workers Union of America referenced Baklor's statement about his staff, adding that "this could not be further from the truth."

The TWU issued its own statement on March 28 titled, "Hey, JetBlue: Stop Blaming Flight Attendants for Your Incompetent Management," singling out both JetBlue and Baklor for not addressing the real problems.
"JetBlue has a history of blaming its flight attendants for issues largely caused by poor decisions by management," the TWU statement reads. "For example, last summer Baklor made arbitrary changes to the Company's attendance policy, which doubled the discipline for flight attendants while ignoring the realities of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in flight attendant terminations."

Across the country, JetBlue canceled 353 flights on Sunday. The airline's cancellations at Logan alone made up around 20 percent of them.

Another spokesperson for JetBlue blamed severe weather in parts of the Southeast on multiple air traffic control delay problems leading to bigger impacts across the industry over the past few days.

Other airlines with cancellations and delays at Logan over the weekend included American, Alaska, Allegiant, Delta, Frontier, Spirit, and Southwest — with Southwest accounting for the most amount of national cancellations overall Sunday (399).

"We are experiencing flight disruptions across our network today due to briefly pausing our service earlier this morning as we worked to resolve an intermittent technology issue, as well as ongoing weather challenges impacting multiple areas within our system," Southwest tweeted over the weekend.

Dozens of upset travelers swarmed Twitter over the weekend searching for some accountability from the airlines, including political commentator Bill O'Reilly, who said "Trying to fly Jet Blue JFK-Turks Caicos. Flight now 3 hours late. No explanation. Weather is fine. This airline is blatantly irresponsible."

Patch editor Haley Cornell contributed to this article.

This article originally appeared on the Cranston Patch