WX Waiver posted for Northeast to Southeast
 

Very confused here... I just got notification for an upcoming flight that 'inclement weather could potentially impact' it.
Waiver includes BOS, JFK, DTW, ATL and other major cities, and waiver is from May 26-28 (Thu-Sat). Weather is gorgeous in BOS and only supposed to be scattered rain or an isolated tstorm early Sat am. Looks same for JFK except shifted earlier, so late night Fri to early Sat. ATL looks like possibly storms on Fri so thats really the only potential mess I can see, but they don't normally issue a waiver for normal spring storms in ATL. Rain happens and I rarely see DL issue a wide scoped waiver especially when it is nothing severe predicted.

This really is suspicious to me and smells of DL potentially using the guise of weather as a cover for what they expect to be operational issues caused by staffing shortages leading into the busy holiday weekend. Any thoughts?

I think it's 100% a cover up. Hopefully the folks at DOT start paying attention some day.

I had the exact same thought. The waiver covers tomorrow and the weather on the east coast is supposed to be perfect.

It's 100% a waiver for the operational meltdown everyone is expecting.

Between check in staffing, gate allocation, and ground handling, the East Coast airport operations are already in meltdown, and we haven't added holiday weekend pilot shortages to the mix yet, to say nothing of call center hold times.

My prediction is 20-30% of mainline going cx over the weekend.

Leaked memo:


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...2173ebb70.jpeg

credit to @xjonnyc on twitter for the leak

edit: link here

AA is getting in on it too now. Northeast and DFW.

AA Travel Alerts

I’m also very suspect of DL’s intentions given what’s been happening as of late… though I will point out that here in NYC, though the weather forecast on most sites hasn’t changed and is just indicating some light rain Friday and Saturday, the local news is now reporting there could be some very strong storms moving in on Friday afternoon (of course, that would be the worst possible timing for holiday weekend travel), so I guess at this point… who knows what’s going to end up happening

In fairness to both DL and AA, the storm forecast was out there days ago (was first a chance of storms starting Thursday, now pushed to Friday)--I am flying out tomorrow night and have been watching it. Hope it's all for naught (both weather and operational-wise).

Right now:
NYC is showing 50% chance Tstorms both Friday and Saturday
DC is showing 80% chance Tstorms on Friday and 40% on Saturday
ATL is showing 90% chance Tstorms on Thursday

As a Meteorologist (with aviation wx experience), I can definitely see why they posted these waivers. And given the compounding staffing factors, they need to be giving proactive flexibility.

It's not just about the conditions at the airports themselves, but also along popular air routes. Starting with ATL tomorrow around noon, any change in arrival/departure rate from the line(s) of storms moving through will immediately trigger delays/cancellations. Throw any storms into the delicate staffing situation, and ATL could get messy. Even in DTW, the proximity to the upper level low pressure will make the environment conducive to thunderstorms.

Then on Friday, the location of the thunderstorms (a broken line stretching from PA southward) is a classic High impact situation for NYC air routes. The New York (ZNY) Center Weather Service Unit (CWSU) has already put out an advisory on this, and I can guarantee Delta Meteorology took this into account when issuing the waiver.

I mean SPC has a large swath on both Thurs and Fri under thunderstorms. If it was a blue sky day I might see the conspiracy, but there's a good chance storms on Friday especially will hurt NE corridor. Combine that with little recovery margin and the waiver makes sense. www.spc.noaa.gov

I mean sure, staffing is potentially an issue. But they all just witnessed ORD get destroyed operationally yesterday (Wed) afternoon from a storm being unexpectedly more severe than they thought (Tuesday nights predictions in CHI were for mild T-storms Wed). And Thuresday isn't looking much better across the country. The ATC planning webinar from last night already has them anticipating reroutes and GS/GDP across the midwest and south east. This is the current operation plan outlook (as of:26/0200Z)So it's not just DL (and AA) saying there's going to be weather, FAA is warning them there's possibilities they will need to reroute traffic and limit traffic at multiple airports, impacting multiple hubs of both DL (ATL/DTW) and AA (CLT/ORD). If they get behind Thuresday, combine that with staffing issues going into the weekend, and the storms moving in to the NE on Friday, with uncertainty about how severe the storms might be (as they blew the CHI forecast today). It would be prudent to just get ahead of things early with a weather waiver to cover the entire weekend.

Well it looks like we're already off to the races. Upon random inspection, pretty much every LGA-ATL flight is delayed this morning, and the 0600 canceled.

I'm glad I'm connecting at MSP today.

And the 6:30am ATL-BOS-ATL flight was canceled for this morning... oh and for Friday also. Hope they don't try to blame that one on 'weather'.

A couple other delays out of BOS to JFK/LGA. Looking at flightaware, DL is leading the pack with 55 cancellations and 132 delays for today already at 11:30am.

T-storms hitting DTW tomorrow