Gina Rousett of New Jersey says a Jet Blue flight attendant was way too attentive on her flight back to Newark from Fort Lauderdale. The incident happened over seven months ago and led to the arrest of Dayne Arokium and his termination from the airline, but Rousett's just now telling her creepy story to CBS2. After some friendly chitchat during boarding, Rousett says Arokium told her "he was going to have nobody sit next to......

The alert about a "suspicious package" at JFK Airport said there were hand grenades in a piece of luggage. The JetBlue terminal was evacuated, only for the grenades to turn out to be World War II grenade replica paperweights. Next time, mail them! JetBlue is having an opening ceremony for its new Terminal 5 today. And yesterday, a Newark Airport terminal was evacuated after many "false positives" on a suspicious bag, which was eventually deemed......

JetBlue may be charging you for pillows and blankets, but it will be auctioning over 300 roundtrip tickets and some vacation packages this week. According to the AP, the opening bids start between 5 and 10 cents: "The flights are to more than 20 destinations, including four 'mystery' JetBlue Getaways Vacation packages to undisclosed locations." There are specific ranges of dates when people can travel and taxes and other fees are not included. A finance......

Remember the lady who tried to argue her way onto a plane last April by bringing up her already checked bags: "What if I had a bomb in my bag? Well, I have a bomb in my bag, so are you guys going to turn the plane around cuz I need my bag" Well, Rosalinda Baez ended up paying JetBlue $23,000 for the plane's emergency landing (they had to be safe, of course). And though......

Jet Blue invited a thousand people out to JFK yesterday to play pretend passengers on ten mock flights they staged at the $743 million terminal that they'll open in October. Passengers in Terminal 5 got to sample sushi and French cuisine from some of the upscale restaurants that will be a part of the terminal in the fall. Jet Blue assigned each of the volunteers an identity and travel itinerary. Carol Weinberg, aka "Mrs. Cattest,"......

Rendering courtesy ICRAVE As if you needed any more reasons to choose Jet Blue over other airlines, Grub Street got their hands on renderings for the dining and drinking areas of the airline's renovated Terminal 5 at JFK airport, scheduled to reopen October 1st. While it does give one pause that the design is being done by ICRAVE, the same firm that unleashed Crobar upon our fair city, their vision is certainly a cut above......

Larry King has two interesting guests tonight: The main guest is JetBlue CEO Dave Barger, who will discuss his airline's changes as higher costs hit the airline industry. And more humorously, writer-director Adam McKay will also be on, to discuss the Paris Hilton response ad on Funny or Die. The ad was shot in the Hamptons--and Paris apparently memorized the entire script!......

JetBlue has announced it will now charge $7 for a pillow and blanket on its flights--and the customers gets to keep them. While the few recent JetBlue passengers we spoke to didn't recall pillows or blankets being offered on their flights, JetBlue asserts it's an environment-conscious and health-conscious move, instead of recycling old pillows and blankies. The soften the blow, JetBlue is also offering a $5 coupon at Bed Bath & Beyond so you can......

The Queens woman who is accused of verbally abusing and punching Jet Blue flight attendants during a flight from NYC to San Francisco was released on bail yesterday. Christina Szele was allegedly drunk and caught the crew's--and fellow passengers'--attention when she lit a cigarette on the plan. She had been in a Denver jail for the past week and a half; 1010 WINS reported, "The magistrate who set her bail ordered her not to travel......

Get this woman a reality TV show! Christina Szele of Woodside, Queens created such a disturbance during a Jet Blue flight from JFK airport to San Francisco that pilots diverted the plane and landed in Denver, where federal authorities took her into custody. According to an affidavit obtained by the Smoking Gun, things started to go sideways after a flight attendant noticed Szele waiting on line for the bathroom with a book of matches and......

If this is what a Jet Blue "buddy pass" is, we totally pass. An Inwood resident is suing the Queens-based airline or $2 million, claiming a pilot made him sit on the plan's toilet for three hours during a flight from San Diego to New York earlier this year. Gokhan Multhu was using a buddy pass (per the AP--the "standby travel voucher that JetBlue employees give to friends") and though the flight was full, since......

A business consultant is accused of "falsely claiming there was a bomb in her suitcase" after she was unable to get onto her JetBlue flight at JFK Airport last week. According to the complaint filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court, Rosalinda Baez was trying to argue her way onto the plane after the jetway closed. Baez allegedly told a flight attendant, "What if I had a bomb in my bag? Well, I have a bomb in......

Photograph of someone determined to get around in the snow by Charley Lhasa on Flickr After January hype - which resulted in rain - and a brief moment of snow last week, a winter snow storm finally made an appearance this year. Two weather disturbances resulted in many inches of snow falling in the region: By 2PM, more than 6 inches fell in the city, which is the biggest snowfall in two years and......

Workers are almost done dismantling the 317 feet long, 23 feet wide stained-glass exterior to the American Airlines’ vacant Terminal 8 building. The red, blue and white wall, comprised of 900 panes of glass, was designed by artist Robert Sowers and was completed in 1960; at the time it was the world’s largest stained-glass window and the first to heavily incorporate stained glass in a secular building, an aesthetic that soon became fashionable. The 48-year-old......

Jaunted took a jaunt over to the new Terminal 5 (not the music venue) at JFK. The terminal, with design by Gensler, will house JetBlue and is set to open in September of this year. The original T5 was the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA terminal and will be incorporated into JetBlue's, which is set behind and connected to it (Jaunted notes that "airline reps say that at minimum there'll be check-in kiosks in the TWA......

After many airline passengers were kept on bad weather-grounded planes for hours without fresh water and working bathrooms, lawmakers backed a bill for a passenger bill of rights. Today, the bill goes into effect, after opposition from the airlines. Governor Spitzer signed the bill into law in August, citing "much needed consumer protections that will help guarantee greater passenger safety and comfort when severe delays impact their travels from New York airports." (Especially important......

While it may be beautiful now, yesterday's weather was awful enough to cause some holiday travel headaches for those flying out of area airports. Winds were gusting up to 47 MPH, and travelers arriving at LaGuardia had two hour delays, which wasn't bad considering arrivals at Kennedy and Newark had delays of four to four-and-a-half hours. A non-weather incident, though, caused a JetBlue flight from San Francisco to New York to be diverted to Denver......

In spite of the reports, hypes and fears, there actually wasn't much snowfall in the city yesterday - just about an inch - though we did see some sleet that quickly melted. The suburbs got a few inches of snow, while much of the accumulation was in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. However, area airports did have a number of delays and canceled flights (many airlines canceled them due to ice conditions, as well......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: Fatal jumper on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, a MOS (member of service) bitten by a dog at 48-36 47 Street in Queens, and a car vs. a building at West 27th Street in Manhattan. A-Rod may stick with the Yankees in a last-minute windfall deal that may be worth worth $280 million. Ira Levin, the author of "Rosemary's Baby," "The Boys From Brazil," and "The Stepford Wives" passed away......

When it comes to driving routes for a JFK airport pickup, George Costanza advocates taking the Grand Central to the Van Wyck, deriding Kramer’s L.I.E. route as a “suicide mission.” In the current New York Magazine cover story, “How to Escape Airport Hell”, the editors invited chauffeur Kevin Sullivan to weigh in. While he comes down squarely on Costanza’s side, he also shares some invaluable alternative routes to all three airports in the unlikely......

New York City was amply represented during last night's National Design Awards at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The Landscape Design award went to PWP Landscape Architecture, the firm that won the World Trade Center Memorial design competition (with Michael Arad). PWP Principal Peter Walker thanked Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki and described the last four years as "difficult," presumably for the number of redesigns and challenges with moving the project forward, but he......

A new plan adopted by the FAA yesterday hopes to decrease delays in airports around the nation by 20%. The focus of the plan is on airports in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelpha, where delays can cause a ripple effect on the rest of the nation's air traffic. The Airspace Redesign Project, as the FAA is calling it, is supposed to modernize the systems in the affected airports (Newark, JFK, LaGuardia, and Philadelphia......

Six months ago, ice storms on Valentine's Day walloped airlines, especially JetBlue, at the area airports. WABC 7 got a hold of some tapes between air traffic controllers and pilots on that crazy day where some flights were lingering on runways for more than seven hours, even up to 13 hours. Here are two of our favorite conversations:Air Traffic Control 1: "These [flights] were there before I got here. You got JetBlue 80, 1048,......

Did you excel at yo-yo and rock, scissor, paper as a kid? Well, this past weekend was the 1st ever New York State Yo-Yo Contest at the South Street Seaport. From what we hear, excelling in yo-yo is the way to get all the ladies (they dig the finger dexterity and creativity with the yo-yo). It's not just the kids that are throwing the yo-yo around either. Downtown Express tells us that Riad Nasr, the......

The NYCLU and ACLU are suing the Transportation Security Administration and Jet Blue over an incident where a passenger was forced to cover/change his shirt, which had Arabic lettering. Last year, Reid Jarrar, an American resident of Iraqi descent, was taking a JetBlue flight at JFK when a TSA official asked him to over his shirt, which read "We Will Not Be Silent" in both English and Arabic. The shirt's message is taken from the......

Governor Spitzer signed airline passenger bill of rights legislation that will ensure that passengers on delayed flights in NY State airports are "provided with basic customer protections." Spitzer said, "As a major international travel hub, it is our duty to take the lead in adopting measures that will ease air travel for passengers." The bill, backed by Queens Assemblyman Michael Gianaris and Long Island State Senator Charles Fuschillo, will "require airlines to have snacks......

Last week, Jonathan Aponte admitted to paying a man $500 to shoot him in the leg so he wouldn't have to return to Iraq and his unit. The physical pain of his injury was augmented by the pains of embarrassment when people complimented or thanked him for his service in the Army as he was transported back to Fort Hood in Texas. While he's facing criminal charges of conspiracy and falsely reporting an incident in......

Okay, so being stranded on a grounded Jet Blue flight for hours and hours on end with the airport in sight is no good. But we think the passengers of a Continental flight from Amsterdam to Newark win the "Woe in my plane ride." Because they had to endure a flight with backed-up toilets that caused sewage to seep down aisles. Last week, passengers flying back to Newark had to stop in Shannon, Ireland because......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a carjacking on 130th St. and 15th Ave. in Queens, an overturned auto on Spring St. and West Broadway in Manhattan, and a stabbing on Caton Ave. in Brooklyn. Remember when Paris Hilton forgot that she'd left her Tinkerbell with her grandma and papered her neighborhood with Lost Dog flyers? New Yorkers hire private detectives and publicists to get the job done right. A tiny dauchsund is missing. New......

Finally, the stats to back up what we know: NYC area airports have had more delays so far this year than in 2006. New data from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows that delays have increased by 140.6% at JFK Airport, when comparing April 2007 to April 2006. The delays at LaGuardia are up by approxmiately 35% and delays at Newark are up by 21%. Senator Charles Schumer says that labor disputes between the......