Even as the Biden administration prepares to leave office in just over a month, it's getting the ball rolling on possible new rules that could mean compensation for passengers when a flight is canceled, changed delayed and it's the airline's fault.
Will My Flight Get Canceled Due to Bad Weather?
27.11.2024 - 20:35 / afar.com / William Macgee
Welcome to Afar Answers: a deep dive into all your unanswered travel questions. Next up: Why are some flights canceled during inclement weather when others aren’t?
It’s a familiar tale. You leave home in the pouring rain for a flight that’s still listed as on time. But when you arrive at the airport, there it is displayed on the departure board—the flight’s been canceled. What’s worse, that same screen shows flights on other airlines to your destination that are still operating.
To the average traveler, the seemingly random nature of these decisions is perplexing. Ask an airline agent what’s going on, and the standard response is typically something along the lines of “It’s just the weather.” If that’s the reason, why aren’t all flights being canceled?
It turns out that there are actually many factors that play into the decision to scrub a flight. And aside from the rare extreme weather event that can shut down an entire airport (remember Snowmageddon, the massive 2010 blizzard that paralyzed much of the Northeast?), most airport hubs can and do stay open in foul weather, just not at full operating capacity.
“Weather affects all the flights at an airport equally, but the way airlines respond is not equal,” said William McGee, aviation expert and author of the book Attention All Passengers, an airline industry tell-all.
He should know: he’s a former FAA-licensed flight dispatcher for a major airline in New York.
While airlines have talked up their latest technology upgrades, recent episodes have shown that at some airlines, there’s still plenty of work to be done. “When it comes to flight operations, communication is everything,” McGee said. “But in the past two years we’ve had several massive meltdowns,” notably at Southwest Airlines in December of 2022, when more than 100,000 flights were delayed or canceled. While it was initially caused by severe weather, the effects were magnified by the carrier’s woefully out-of-date computer scheduling software.
“Southwest pilots were tweeting all that week that ‘I’m at the airport and dressed and ready to go, and I’m on hold with the airline call center like it’s 1956,’ ” he said.
McGee noted that when a busy airport is suddenly operating under strained circumstances due to weather, maintaining air safety is the key decision-driver. But beyond that, carriers are affected by many considerations. “It’s a collection of moving parts,” said McGee. Decisions about when and why to cancel or delay flights are based on “availability of aircraft, crew scheduling, or maintenance demands.” And, he added, when you throw weather into the mix, that just further complicates everything.
Let’s be clear. When inclement weather strikes, it’s not that airlines are unprepared.
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