It’s no big secret that JB hasn’t been my preferred carrier in the past but at least we had reached a bit of an impasse and I was tolerating the little missteps that seemed to happen with regularity.

Yesterday, and please forgive me for my terminology, was IMHO a total $hit $how.

We should have assumed there’d be issues when we heard the FLL flight was diverted to San Juan. Reason given, “JB cares about the safety and well-being of their passengers and deemed it unsafe to land in the winds around a SXM” I guess AA, Air France, Air Caribe and countless other carriers don’t have these concerns for their patrons since they were all able to land safely and take off again in the same basic time frame.

And then it was our turn.

Basically JB used the same story for our flight only it got worse. After our flight finally arrived on SXM, they announced they were sending us to San Juan, too, where we would depart at midnight local time for JFK after the new flight crew arrived. They couldn’t answer any status questions; they were unable to tell us where we would do C & I and when I suggested if we were landing and deplaning in San Juan wouldn’t we have to do it there the flight attendants didn’t know.

And once on the ground in PR it was even worse as there was no one there directing us or at least giving us the protocol and when we asked at various different JB staffed counters, they all had answers and most of them were wrong. We finally found someone who directed us to the TSA area and from that point it got better. But not much. When we eventually got to the gate that knew our story, they told us we’d be on the same plane in our same seats and would use our same boarding passes. I guess the gate agent was feeling the wrath so he ordered pizzas for us so at about 10:00 we were each given a slice of tepid pizza and a glass of sprite or water so at least we knew they were trying and their intentions were good.

We boarded around midnight local time for a straight shot into JFK where at least we didn’t have to deal with C & I and were able to access our luggage and head to our final destinations. We located our driver and headed home, the good news being, at least at that time of night there’s not a lot of traffic to deal with. And that was the only good news. We arrived at our home in CT at 5:00 am CT time. All of which I’m sure has much to do with why we’re so exhausted and cranky tonight.

And the reason I’m so irritated about all this is because I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first time something like this has happened and all they had to do was have one informed staff PR person meet the plane and tell us where to go and what to do rather than leaving us all to our own devices to tour much of the San Juan Airport needlessly. A simple directive of go to Carousel # whatever and claim your bags; Go to C & I and answer the questions; recheck your baggage; proceed to and pass through TSA and then go to Gate whatever and wait for your flight.

Nah, that would have been too easy! There! I got that off my chest and I’m done!