JetBlue Airways has been served a $2 million fine by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) due to its many delayed flights. The penalty is a first for the DOT, which has never before obliged an airline to pay a fine over delays.
The $2 million fine consists of two separate amounts. Half of the penalty, $1 million, is meant to go to JetBlue customers affected by delays or disruptions on flights covered by the DOT’s order or any future flight cancellations or delays of three hours or more caused by JetBlue within the next year. The other half will go to the US Treasury. The airline will have to pay $500,000 within 60 days and the rest of the amount within one year after the first payment.
“Illegal chronic flight delays make flying unreliable for travelers. Today’s action puts the airline industry on notice that we expect their flight schedules to reflect reality. The department will enforce the law against airlines with chronic delays or other unrealistic scheduling practices in order to protect healthy competition in commercial aviation and ensure passengers are treated fairly”, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.
Following DOT rules, airlines are prohibited from promising unrealistic schedules that do not reflect actual flight departure and arrival times. The department sees it as an “unfair, deceptive, and anticompetitive practice that disrupts passengers’ travel plans, denies them reliable scheduling information, and allows airlines to unfairly capture business from competitors by misleading consumers.”
Officially, one form of unrealistic scheduling consists of chronically delaying a flight for more than four consecutive months. The DOT considers a flight as chronically delayed if it flies at least 10 times a month and arrives more than 30 minutes late more than 50% of the time. Cancellations are included as delays within this calculation.
“DOT’s investigation uncovered that JetBlue operated four chronically delayed flights at least 145 times between June 2022 through November 2023. Each flight was chronically delayed for five straight months in a row – or more. Despite DOT warning JetBlue about the chronic delays on its flight between John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., the airline continued to operate three more chronically delayed flights between Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, Fla. and JFK, and between Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and Windsor Locks, Conn”, the DOT said in a statement.
“Regardless of the cause of the disruption for any specific flight, DOT rules provide airlines adequate time to fix their schedule after a flight becomes chronically delayed to avoid illegal unrealistic scheduling. JetBlue failed to do so”, the statement continued.
According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics the airline was responsible for over 70% of the disruptions for the four chronically delayed flights.
