What happens when a winter storm hits multiple airline hubs at once? It’s less about how much snow is at a particular airport and more about the unseen math of where the planes and crews will end up. In the latest storm, thousands of passengers found themselves waiting in long lines, sleeping in hotels, or sitting through extended ground delays as airlines did what it took to keep flights safe and get their schedules restarted in the right places.
The number of cancellations was also tracked through data, with the number of flight cancellations reaching five figures in the U.S., a number not seen since the early days of the pandemic.
1. The cancellation totals reached levels seen in the early pandemic
The number of cancellations reported by the U.S. airlines has exceeded 10,900 flights canceled, with more than 3,400 flights delayed as of late Sunday afternoon, based on 12,053 cancellations reported as of Sunday evening. The Cirium benchmark set earlier in March 2020 is higher, but the current storm’s disruption is of the same category where the cancellations are a national system problem, and not a local problem.
2. Airports can appear normal on the ground while the network breaks in the air
Among the most extreme instances were those of hub heavies, in which the cancellation rates exceeded 80% and entered the high 90s. In the Washington market, Ronald Reagan Washington National suspended originating flights, while New York’s LaGuardia, Newark, and Kennedy airports were among those with drastic reductions. The problem is in its design: when a plane or employee cannot get to a hub, dozens of flights throughout the country are left without the capacity they were intended to handle.
3. De-icing and “timed out” crews turn a short trip into an all-day ordeal
For the passengers, the situation could be a complex of issues. “It was a domino effect of a delay, de-icing because ‘the frost started hitting,’ and then a crew that was no longer legal to fly,” said Annie Yuen, 23, who was traveling from Dallas to Guatemala. “So we had to spend some time de-icing the plane,” Yuen said. After an overnight stay in an airline hotel, her next flight included three and a half hours on the plane before departure. “Longer than the flight,” Yuen said. The emotional roller coaster can be extreme. “After we got out and we got above the clouds, we saw the sun, and it was amazing,” Yuen said.
4. “Proactive” cancellations are a recovery strategy, not just bad luck
Flights are grounded before the bad weather arrives, not after. The idea is to prevent planes from being stranded at airports that could shut down, run out of de-icing fluid, or not have enough staff. Delta’s operations chief, John Laughter, explained the thinking: “It’s about keeping the airport, the environment clean and ready, snow removed, and then it’s about having our pilots, our flight attendants and our airplanes all lined up so we can get our customers onboard and move them to where they want to be.”
5. The end of the storm does not mean the end of the disruption
Even after the runways are opened, there is a second wave for the airlines: repositioning the aircraft and matching the crews with the right aircraft and routes. “Because there are so many different airlines involved, I think it’s going to come down heavily to the individual airline’s network structure, the amount of hit that each of them has taken, and just the intrinsic capacity of the airlines to handle these massive disruptions,” said Vikrant Vaze, a Dartmouth professor who studies airline logistics.
6. Travel waivers are in place to help reduce airport congestion and rebooking
Most of the big airlines had waivers that allowed their customers to change their travel plans without any charges if certain criteria were met, including the same origin and destination, among others. Delta Air Lines informed their customers that “Delta is offering flexibility to customers with existing bookings to change their travel with no fees,” while encouraging people to check the status of flights before heading out to the airport. The purpose of the waivers is to shift some of the travelers from the most challenging days in order to allow others to be rescheduled.
7. Rights to refunds are more straightforward than many travelers believe
If the flight is cancelled and the passenger decides not to travel, then according to federal regulations, the passenger has the right to a refund regardless of the type of ticket purchased. This is also true if the passenger decides not to travel due to a flight delay and the original flight is not operated by the airline.
The minimum right to a refund is outlined in the customer refund guidelines for airlines. In such cases, the benefit is to the passengers who check their flight status early and view the flight schedule as a moving target until wheels up.
