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The impact from last month’s extreme winter weather in the US cost passengers more than $2.5 billion and airlines between $75 million to $150 million.
The ‘Polar Vortex’ and winter storms at the beginning of January were an aberration in terms of cancellations and delays, but were compounded by winter storms, cancellations and delays that continued throughout the month.
JetBlue was one of the worst affected carriers but regional airlines took the brunt of the cancellations, accounting for 67%, a study by airline operations software company masFlight shows.
US airlines cancelled 49,000 flights and delayed another 300,000 during the month, making it worse than February 2010 when 32,500 cancellations were the result of two back-to-back storms during the first 10 days of the month followed by a smaller storm,
Some 30 million passengers faced cancelled and delayed flights in January, the worst month for flight disruptions in recent memory.
In addition to the lost productivity and additional expenses, such as hotel rooms and meals, cancelled flights added an approximately 18 additional hours to passenger travel times owing to high industry load factors and a consequent difficulty in re-booking.
Regional airlines accounted for the vast majority of cancellations at more than 32,000 with an additional 130,000 delayed flights in January. Mainline cancellations numbered 17,000 and 170,000 flights delayed.
MasFlight analysed cancellations and delays for the month and found that they exceeded all January cancellations back to January 2009 and was worse than Hurricane Sandy in the autumn of 2013.
Two major regulatory changes impacted airline operations since 2009, increasing flight cancellation rates.
The first was the US Department of Transport tarmac delay rule. Starting in 2010 for domestic flights and 2011 for international flights, DoT imposed fines up to $27,500 for every instance in which a carrier held passengers onboard on the ground without the opportunity to deplane for three hours (domestic) or four hours (international).
To mitigate risk of fines, airlines began to return flights to the gate well before the three-hour mark, driving many more gate returns than originally anticipated and subsequent cancellations to open gates for returning flights.
While tarmac delays are significantly down versus 2007, there were 140 flights with long onboard delays, with a consequent spike in cancellation rates.
The second major regulatory change was FAR 117, which went into effect on January 4 and imposed new limits on the amount of time U.S. pilots can be “on duty”, i.e. available to fly whether they do so or not.
FAR 117 has made it harder for airlines to recover from weather events because time on the ground during flight delays counted against new limits – and caused pilots to “time out” when flights were badly delayed.
If crews time-out away from bases, pilots are then out of position for future flights, creating significant follow-on disruption to the system.
Airlines will need to increase staffing and change operating procedures to meet the new rules, but this will take time, the report warns.