Bermudians abroad faced two days of travel chaos after major winter storms and operational problems caused long flight delays.

A massive snowstorm and freezing temperatures in the north east of the country meant the cancellation of the Sunday morning JetBlue flight from New York’s JFK to Bermuda.

Other flights were cancelled because of the weather, which caused a backlog of planes waiting to leave the runway.

Tracy Robinson, a passenger on board the JetBlue flight to the island scheduled to leave JFK at 9.31am on Sunday, said the problems caused chaos and the airline did not help.

Ms Robinson said: “JetBlue didn’t tell us what was happening. We saw other planes landing and taking off, but they said our plane was in the hangar as there were issues with the engines.

“We had to go back to the gate three times — we were on the plane for two hours or longer each time. That took us up until 10.55pm.”

“Then we had to wait for our luggage and it was 3am before it arrived. We waited there because we needed to check the bags in again before the next flight.

“Everyone was waiting for their luggage in the area and trying to be careful because of Covid. It was chaos.”

Ms Robinson said the ordeal meant she had no sleep for 36 hours.

She added the airline gave her no information about hotel accommodation and she spent the night in the airport — but hit more problems when she tried to check her bags in yesterday morning.

Ms Robinson said “Once we got our luggage we went upstairs to check in and that was a nightmare. We couldn’t check in on our phones or at the kiosk so we had to wait at the help desk with loads of other people. It was pure chaos.

She added that there were 48 people on the flight, including Bermudians and residents, many of them angry about the lack of communication from JetBlue.

But she said: “One of the pilots was excellent. He gave us lots of information and kept us updated. It wasn’t just our flight. There were about 15 flights cancelled.

Ms Robinson added: “It seemed like JetBlue tried their best to get away with hotel costs for the stranded passengers.”

She said JetBlue later sent an e-mail to passengers to apologise and offered them credits against future flights.

But Ms Robinson said: “Most people said they wouldn’t even use it. They don’t want to use JetBlue again — they were that frustrated. They could have dealt with it better and let us know what was going on.”

Passengers faced further delays when yesterday’s flight was also delayed.

Hannah Emmerson, another Bermudian aboard the delayed flight, said she decided not to wait for her luggage on Sunday night and checked into a hotel for a couple of hours’ sleep.

But she said there were technical problems with the plane after she went back to the airport yesterday morning.

Ms Emmerson added: “Luckily, in the morning we found our bags in a pile that had been pulled off the conveyor belt.

“The entire airport was a mess. The lines for luggage the next day were ridiculous, worse than the previous night.

“They said they needed a spare part for the plane. Eventually it worked out and the flight left around midday.“

Ms Emmerson said that she had met a lot of Bermudians in the same boat but they had kept their spirits up despite their frustration.

She added: “God bless Bermudians. We all came out smiling.”

Ms Emmerson said most of the passengers planned to write to JetBlue to complain.

A spokesman for JetBlue said last night: “After this weekend’s heavy snow and freezing temperatures in the north east, we are focused on safely resuming our flight schedule.

“We have made good progress in ramping up operations in Boston, LaGuardia and Newark.

“At JFK, we started operations on Saturday as planned but faced a number of conditions that have slowed the operation down.”

The spokesman added: “We have combined some flights today to ease those constraints and are working to rebook customers.”

“It normally takes a few days to fully recover when a storm of this size significantly impacts our two largest markets of New York and Boston and our first priority continues to be restarting safely.”