why fly

well AC certainly screwed the customer today. LGA and EWR are still fine, and AC stopped its flights at 10AM?
What news did AC watch that they screwed up so badly?

SparseFlyer

Better safe than sorry?

Votre sécurité est notre priorité.

why fly

For who? for a customer who misses the connection for AC error?

I am sure glad my friends flying to SGN were not on AC flights to EWR this morning.

Admiral Ackbar

I am no fan of AC but I will give them a lot of leeway for being proactive. I was more talking about the mass hysteria that the media develops for a (potentially serious, granted) snow storm.

You would think the US east of Cleveland is under nuclear attack or something.

SparseFlyer

*shrug*

I wish I knew.

But what if the storm did happen.

And what if it had resulted in a new post in the incident thread.

What would you have said then?

Edit: in the end, maybe AC is just managing its plane rotation

why fly

Or in the end AC just mismanaged the situation. Ending planes at 10AM for a storm to hit EWR/lga at midnight.

djkyyc

Yeah, UA ended their YYZ EWR flights after the 11:30 AM departure so they operated a whole 90 minutes longer than AC.

There are plenty of AC things to complain about, this isn't one of them. And if your friends had been on AC the rebooking tool has been available for the last 3 days, they would have been okay.

PLeblond

So three weeks ago when a storm, that wasn't supposed to be a storm, hits YYZ/YOW/YUL many people here went nuts that they weren't prepared.

Now, the thread asks Will AC be ready, and according to some, they're screwing customers by being proactive...

Why am I not surprised.

For those who are interested in a good article, TIME last January or February had a lengthy explanation of all sorts of aircraft scheduling. Why one flight might cancelled while another one is not, etc. etc. etc.

One of the things they mentioned is that airlines are being more and more proactive to preemptively cancel flights in the case of major weather systems.

Airlines have found that its better to cancel a flight earlier and keep the plane at a more strategic area (hub) than to strand a plane, a crew etc. at a far out place. That way, when the storm clears, operations get back to normal much more quickly on the back end.

For example, a crew stuck in a major delay at a non-hub airport will time out, then the airline needs to send another crew to operate the flight and bring the original crew back causing further delays...

But of course, that probably makes too much sense, so lets go back to saying they are screwing passengers.

why fly

wow after 66 posts, or this a new handle?

BRAISKI

I love how the news overly exaggerates it!

If this was say happening in tropical country then this would be LIFE THREATENING!

CloudsBelow

I know you're being overly harsh to make another anti-AC point but I kind of agree with you here. Airlines need to better manage these things. A 7-year old could simply cancel all flights ... AC has a large staff and a material network in NE USA. They should have been able to get "closer" than 12 hours before the storm.

Absolute

I feel the same way, having been stuck on the tarmac in a similar storm. Anyone remember February 8th, 2013? YYZ almost completely shut down, a Sunwing flight stuck on the tarmac for 13 hours, planes not able to get to a gate because existing planes were stuck too deep in snow?

I was lucky that day on a HKG-YYZ flight; we were able to land and only had two hours waiting on the tarmac. Only reason we managed to get a gate was because the pilot changed from a minimum fuel to fuel emergency, as he said they wouldn't be able to refuel and restart the engines waiting in the taxiway.

At least this time lots of advance notice was given for people to start making changes, or to decide to gamble with keeping their existing flights.

BRAISKI

http://www.cbc.ca/news/snowstorm-for...lize-1.2933628

Looks like they missed this one...