Hundreds Of Cancellations At Boston Logan Airport Frustrate Travelers

BOSTON — Boston Logan International Airport is seeing an increase in canceled and delayed flights after hundreds of travelers were stuck stranded in terminals or outside the gates for hours this weekend.

As of 10 a.m. Monday, there were already 50 reported flight cancellations and 68 delays reported by FlightAware.

On Sunday, more than 100 flights to or from Logan Airport were canceled, with over 200 delays. On Saturday, JetBlue alone canceled 72 of the 103 flights canceled throughout the airport — representing about 70 percent of all flights.

With 215 delays from the weekend, 110 of them were from JetBlue, meaning more than half of Logan's delayed flights came from JetBlue alone.

"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.

In Savanah, GA Monday morning, Emily Cooper, 33, of Arbil, said she was booked on standby for a flight to Boston after her original flight was canceled on Saturday. "I'm not optimistic, though. I'm probably looking at another night or two in Georgia," she said as she waited for a rideshare to the airport in front of her hotel. "I was booked for two different flights on Sunday and both of them were canceled."

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."