American Airlines has taken the lead in Winter Storm Fern cancellations, proactively posting more than 800 cancellations on Saturday – more than twice as many as Delta and United Airlines combined.
Weather forecasters are warning of major disruption across 40 states over the weekend as a blast of freezing cold arctic air slowly moves across the United States.
Nearly 10,000 flights have already been canceled from Friday through to the end of Sunday, according to data supplied by flight tracking service Flight Aware. That number is expected to rise sharply as the weekend progresses.
American Airlines has made the decision to proactively cancel around a quarter of its entire flying schedule on both Saturday and Sunday. The aim is to have aircraft and crews in position where they are needed so that the operation can be quickly restored once the worst of the weather has passed through.
At the same time, the carrier has added thousands more seats on a key route between Charlotte and Chicago O’Hare. Why? Because both of these major hubs for the airline are not expected to be as badly affected by the winter storm as other key airports in its network.
Ahead of the worst of the storm, American Airlines also added thousands more seats on flights out of Dallas Fort Worth, and additional flights are scheduled to arrive in the North Texas city on Sunday.
American’s regional subsidiaries, Envoy Air and PSA, have also collectively canceled 510 flights on Saturday, while Southwest has proactively nixed 571 flights.
So far, at least, both Delta and United have only canceled around 5% of their respective schedules on Saturday, but the situation is set to be a lot worse on Sunday, with Delta already posting 743 cancellations, and United canceling 350 flights.
Airlines are encouraging passengers to postpone any weekend travel plans wherever possible and have issued travel waivers to allow customers to rebook onto flights from Sunday onwards.
International carriers have also axed many flights to and from affected areas in the United States over the weekend, with Texas and the Northeast taking the brunt of cancellations.
Passengers who were meant to be traveling to or from Europe or the UK are entitled to assistance in the form of refreshments and hotel accommodation for overnight delays, but delay compensation will not be payable as the winter storm is considered an ‘extraordinary circumstance.’
