Originally Posted by
LarryJ
It doesn't take much weather to disrupt the traffic into the NYC area. There are too many busy airports in a relatively small area.
EWR has basically three arrivals used by air carriers. One from the north, one from the west (from over Williamsport), and one from the south (over DC and Philly). When storms, even some distance from the NYC area, shut down one of those arrivals, the remaining usable arrival(s) become saturated and there are big delays. Same thing with the limited number of departures.
If departures are stopped for any length of time, they run out of room for new arrivals because the gates can't clear and parking space runs out. The new A terminal helps, but it is still constrained.
The same thing happens at LGA, JFK, PHL, and BOS. Clear weather at the airport doesn't help when the airplanes can't get in or out.
Ok...we were sitting in CHS during this delay on Saturday and our Captain was AMAZING. Basically came to the podium every hour, at 50 past the hour (or 5 minutes after EWR extended the ground stop), to give everybody an update and then stand around answering questions and chatting with customers for another 10-15 minutes. Probably the best and most comprehensive delay updates I've experienced in 30 years of being a very frequent domestic flyer.
At around 5pm he noted that the B6 and DL flights were opening back up a few gates down and boarding for LGA and JFK. Said "this is completely EWR and not weather anymore". Acknowledged exactly what you wrote above- that there was an impossible backup at the gates and on the tarmac, and that EWR simply couldn't accept any flights. When I pulled up flightaware to show him some of the inbound planes to EWR (which took off during the ground stop), he noted the airports and/or the aircraft. Either super important positioning or aircraft that were then heading INTL.
I had one flight on Friday go mechanical and another on Saturday eventually time out and get kicked to Sunday, but the Captain and the gate staff in CHS were simply superb. We complain (rightfully) about so much with UA these days- food, etc.- but man did this group of people kill it. One of the dads near us was actually using it as a teaching moment for his pre-teen kids. Noted that of the 100+ people in the gate area only 1 or 2 were agitated and that it was solely because they were transparent with consistent communication.