Originally Posted by
moomooman
This is more of a PHL airport employee issue than an a/c issue. With the city paralyzed by the snow, it will be very tough for people to get to work at the airport. Think agents, rampers, TSA etc. probably be a few days before things resemble normal. That said, AS should be able to recover quicker without airplanes and crews stranded all over the eastern seaboard.
In DFW a couple months ago, a little bit of ice that melted by noon around the metro plex everything cancelled and backed up. Not because of a/c or de ice capabilities but because of employees inability to get to work/sick calls to avoid having to try to come in.
I understand that. I know that the major roads around here (suburban Philly) are bare and that the snow had pretty much stopped by 9 PM last night (when I last shoveled my driveway and sidewalk; as of this morning, there was no snow that had fallen or drifted onto the shoveled portion). The airport SEPTA line is open (although most of the rest of the public transit system is not operating or sharply limited today). It's a beautiful, sunny day with calm winds.
So I'm rather surprised that the airport is still apparently in such bad shape that they don't expect to have good capacity to land Alaska's flight by 5 PM. (As you say, it's not like AA and other east coast-based planes and crews; the plane just has to get out of Seattle this morning and land safely. I guess I don't know if AS has a crew ready to go here in PHL or other east coast cities to operate the return flights to the west coast.) Oh well. I certainly don't envy the city the responsibility of dealing with clearing all this snow; I'm just skiing here (and wishing they weren't so efficient about clearing the roads -- I can't ski along them!).