Sandy shuts down Northeast air travel

Sandy shuts down Northeast air travel

Superstorm Sandy grounded more than 18,000 flights acrossthe Northeast and the globe, and it will take days before travel gets back tonormal.

According to the flight-tracking service FlightAware, morethan 7,000 flights were canceled on Tuesday alone. Delays rippled across theU.S., affecting travelers in cities from San Francisco to Atlanta. Somepassengers attempting to fly out of Europe and Asia also were stuck.

Authorities closed the three big New York airports becauseof the storm. New York has the nation's busiest airspace, so cancellationsthere can dramatically affect travel in other cities.

It was possible that John F. Kennedy airport would re-openfor flights on Wednesday, according to the Port Authority of New York and NewJersey. It wasn't known when the LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. airports wouldreopen.

Flying began to resume at other airports. Delta restartedflying from Boston and Washington Dulles and Reagan on Tuesday. Airlinespokesman Morgan Durrant said it would resume domestic flights from JFK onWednesday.

Service was slowly returning to Philadelphia InternationalAirport on Tuesday afternoon.

Hurricane Sandy converged with a cold-weather system andslammed into New Jersey on Monday evening with 80 mph winds. The monstroushybrid of rain and high wind — and even snow in some mountainous inland areas —has killed more than three dozen people in the U.S.

Airlines anticipated the storm's impact and began cancelingflights on Saturday. By Tuesday they had scrapped more than 18,000.

In years past, airlines would have operated many of thoseflights — and left airplanes and crews stranded in the wrong cities when ablizzard or thunderstorm shut things down.

But airlines have gotten aggressive about canceling becauseit makes restarting flights easier.

"It's kind of like dominoes — when one aircraft is outof place, it means the flight crew is out of place, and that has a rippleeffect throughout the rest of the day," said Lance Sherry, who runs theCenter for Air Transportation Systems Research at George Mason University.

The number of cancellations from Sandy was roughly on parwith other major storms that airlines deal with. A major winter storm in early2011 caused 14,000 cancellations over four days.

Airlines face a large task in getting things back to normal.Workers had to clear garbage and downed tree limbs from runways at JFK. Waterwas on the runway at LaGuardia, according to a letter from United CEO JeffSmisek to workers. At one point, some airlines hoped to restart some New Yorkflights by late Tuesday, but that idea went out the window right along with thetravel plans of their passengers.

Flooded roads and closed subways will keep some workers fromthe airport. Reservations workers at other airports and at call centers arebusy dealing with stranded passengers.

Some travelers hunkered down and waited, while others lookedfor a new way home.

Orbitz said car rates jumped 14 percent in New York fromlast week. Rates jumped even higher in Boston and Washington, including a 50percent spike in Philadelphia.

Orbitz said hotel room rates rose 55 percent in Newark,where cancellations accelerated earlier than other New York-area airports. Theyrose 9 percent in one week in Washington, but fell 8 percent in Boston and NewYork City.

Some travelers figured they could do better the further awaythey got from the coast.

Wedding photographer Josh Saran was in Washington D.C. toshoot a Saturday wedding. His Southwest flight home to Seattle was canceled, sohe rented a car and headed toward Columbus, Ohio. When snow closed the highway,he turned his rented Chevy Aveo toward Pittsburgh to catch a US Airways flight.

"I have a really loving and smart girlfriend in Seattlethat sits in front of a computer and calls the airlines and sees where I cango," he said.

Airline reservations systems are so complex that onedepartment might cancel a flight even while a reservations worker is trying toshift a traveler onto that same flight, said Joe Brancatelli, a travel expertwho runs a newsletter for business travelers.

Travelers don't have any choice but to be patient, he said.

"Where are they gonna go? They hate United today, theygo to Delta next week," he said. "Delta screws them, they go toAmerican, and then it's a big circle."

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