JetBlue Executive Apologizes For Tarmac Delay On YouTube

After stranding a planeload of passengers on a Connecticut tarmac for seven hours during the weekend snowstorm, JetBlue has taken to YouTube to issue an apology to the aggrieved fliers.

In a 78-second clip, Chief Operating Officer Rob Maruster explains that not one but six flights were diverted to Hartford's Bradley International Airport over the weekend. (The airport took nearly two dozen total diverted flights, CNN reports.)

"We did not deplane those aircraft in our target time allotted," Maruster says of the flights, one of which was stranded for more than seven hours as a pilot tried everything he could to get the plane parked. At one point, in radio contact with airport officials, the pilot asks, "Look, you know we can't seem to get any help from our own company, I apologize for this, but is there any way you can get a tug and a tow bar out here to us and get us towed somewhere to a gate or something. I don't care. Take us anywhere."

In the apology video, Maruster admits that customers "Count on us for a lot more and we promise a lot more and we know we let some of you down over the course of this weekend."

Maruster says his company will cooperate with a Department of Transportation investigation into the tarmac stranding. Last year, the DOT instituted a three-hour rule on ground delays, and Saturday's Flight 504 appears to have broken the prohibition on extended strandings.

This isn't the first time JetBlue has taken to YouTube to issue an apology. Then-CEO David Neeleman issued a misty-eyed mea culpa after a Valentine's Day blizzard in 2007, a video that to date has clocked more than 400,000 views.