Hello again everyone,
Well, sadly I did not make it out. Had a pretty terrible day here in Haiti. My flight was initially delayed due to weather in New York, but my connecting flight was 6 hours later so Jet Blue assured us that even with the delay we would be ok. Thus I didn't pursue any other flights out of Haiti. The plane landed from New York in Haiti at 2:30 pm.......at 3:30 one of the flight attendants walked by and asked if we were taking the plane to JFK, and when we said yes, he was like oh it's about to leave you better hurry ---- mass panic. Literally everyone rushed the gate. After an hour of standing now surrounded by angry screaming Haitians, Jet blue informs us that they cancelled the flight. Why? Not because of the weather but because the flight crew worked too many hours and they could no longer continue -- they couldn't have told us that like 6 hours before? Or when the flight left New York? Clearly they knew how long the flight crew had been working. So, asked for a flight to Miami -- all flights are actually cancelled. Jet blue shut down. No other flight until.....wait for it........Thursday! Where should I sleep you ask? They said the airport. For 5 days. No food vouchers, no hotel, nothing. Their area is awful too cause you go through a separate extra security so once you're in, there's no bathroom no food nothing. You have to leave and redo all the security. So we were already a little cranky. Now you're telling me to sleep in the airport until Thursday???? And at this point the other airlines had nothing available either. Completely booked with no options. Jet blue remained adamant and said that if we wanted a flight, it was Thursday - take it or leave it.
Now Bob and Rae had apparently put an alert on their phone for my flight, and when they found out it cancelled they emailed me. At this point, out of the jet blue area I was able to pick up so,e free wifi and saw their email. They were incredibly gracious and came back to the airport and waited a couple hours as I tried to get a new flight. Eventually we just left and went back to their place. My parents were working back home to try to find anything sooner than Thursday (especially cause I start surgery on Monday, and they wouldn't take kindly to being late), and as soon as I got back to Bobs I started searching too. After a couple hours we were able to get a crazy expensive flight to Miami and a couple hours after that found another crazy expensive flight to Chicago on Monday morning, arriving at midway at 9:30am (hopefully anyway). I just emailed my rotation coordinators and pleaded my case, and am really hoping that they realize I, doing the best I can -- even just paid $2,000 to get home. Ugh and so far Jet blue has said they won't do anything about it. So far def the worst customer service I've ever dealt with. They told us at the airport that it had nothing to do with weather, just that they didn't schedule properly. But then later said they're not responsible for acts of God and that's why no vouchers or anything. I'll be discussing with their customer service department for a while to come I'm sure.
I was hoping to have a day to rest, unpack, shower (water is still out so been about 5 days), and prep for my new rotation.....which won't happen haha. I'll get back and immediately drive to Skokie to start surgery. Hopefully they still let me start the rotation and don't kill my evaluations too bad for being "unprofessional" based on their standards. Anyway, hopefully I actually make it back lol. Gonna be a long couple days here. I'd ask for prayer that I make it back on time.....but that's already passed lol, so we'll just see what happens. Thanks for reading. I'll let you know if I'm ever back in America.
-Aaron
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