No, It Wasn’t Terrorism. JetBlue Flight at JFK Lost Communications With the Tower

There was a real buzz tonight at New York JFK. A JetBlue flight, 1623 to Los Angeles, went silent. Media picked this up, and there was little to no information about what was happening. Speculation abounded, fearing the worst.

Law enforcement surrounded the aircraft and then boarded.

A passenger reported 10 officers boarded.

And it turns out that all it was was communications equipment failure.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. did nobody have a MF cell phone? what a ridiculous state of affairs … i’d sue jet blue and port authority police (and i’m hardly a litigious person)

  2. Yes because the smart thing to do when heavily armed police enter your plane with weapons in a potential hijack situation and orders you to put your hands up is to grab your phone and point it in their direction. Some real einsteins on that flight apparently.

  3. Presumably they squarked 7500 instead of 7600. The pilots need to remember the rhyme for the emergency transponder codes, which are 7500 (hijack), 7600 (comms failure) and 7700 (mayday-type emergency):

    “75, being taken alive;
    “76, need a radio fix;
    77, going to heaven”

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