Yardley

When we're at the gate in a groundstop and passengers approach and ask questions about why they might miss their connection to Europe/deep South America/Caribbean/Latin America/lower 48 I tell them how it is with EWR most days per week in the afternoon regardless of weather, I get real excited about the opportunity to answer.

They inevitably ask about how to prevent their situation from happening again.

I tell them of the vast network of flights that the top U.S. transatlantic carrier (that, by the way, flies 90% of its Atlantic flights with widebody airplanes with 1 middle seat per seven pax) has through a hub in the southeast and northeast. Or the stunning amount of connections that can be made through Amsterdam on a certain U.S. carrier with the best codeshare alliance in the world.

I don't stand there as a Continental Express pilot telling them to take their business elsewhere.

But I do give them all the information they request, and make it stupifyingly obvious as to how they ought to travel to Europe next time around.

When five businessmen stand there and wanna know why they're going to miss their business first seats to Germany, you can't tell them BS when they've told you they had planned for all afternoon in EWR so they could make their flight. Give them a good alternative to CAL/EWR, or they'll just go to a foreign airline. After a while they are going to take their business elsewhere anyway (after enough A to C bus rides and missed connections and days lost from their vacations/business trips) so you might as well give them a new way that keeps their money on a US carrier.