Summer Flight Delayed? Don’t Assume It’s a Storm
His initial flight was canceled because of storms,
and the subsequent flight — on which he managed to get the last open seat — was first delayed and then rerouted around a patch of stormy weather, more than doubling the length of a one-hour flight.
Scheduling around storms is a complicated process involving not only the affected airlines
but also air traffic control, and must take into account everything from the number of flights and passengers affected to limits on flight crew hours, gate availability and tarmac delay rules that airlines can be fined for violating.
“The issue is they move in lines, generally west to east,
and they generally move right through the Ohio Valley, which is probably the routing of 40 percent of the east-west traffic in the U. S.,” said Robert W. Mann, an airline industry consultant.
There’s also the chance that the temperatures will be so high, flights will be delayed or even canceled
because the hotter, thinner air makes it more difficult for planes to get enough lift.
“If it’s looking problematic, you’ve got to expect delays, so you’ve got to know where planes are coming from,” he said.
Consulting, is “if it gets down near the taxiway.” Wind shear during landing “can be quite a problem
because you’re often slowing the plane down to a pace where it’s very difficult to recover,” he said.
“With more passengers,” he said, “when things start to fall apart, more people are inconvenienced.”
Rich Prest, a management consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area who flies up to 100,000 miles a year, said a recent business trip between Minneapolis
and Chicago had turned into an ordeal because of the weather.
