FlyerTalk Forums - Pre-cancellation of flights

Interesting catch!

I love articles like this which transform the author’s single experience into broad platitudes about whatever happened to wrong him or her. Today it’s the airline industry, tomorrow it’s the cable TV industry or the health care industry.

The magnitude and ferocity of this storm was not overestimated, and pre-emptive cancelation is a fully justified (and not new) action. The alternative scenario puts the passenger at the airport to face long delays and a high likelihood of ultimately being canceled or diverted anyway. That is to most people a much worse scenario than being contacted in advance, being told that the flight would not operate, and being given alternatives. Of course the alternative of a five-day delay for another flight is not a good one. But…the issues of weather, safety, and ATC were the same regardless of how full the planes were and what kind of alternatives existed. Who would be happy with a decision along the lines of “well, it’s pretty risky but since the flights are full for the next few days, we’ll guts it and hoep for the best”.

When pre-emptive cancelations are not made, that creates fertile ground for the trapped-on-a-plane scenarios the media loves to pounce on. The author’s flight was scheduled into Boston either at 16:55 or at 23:01…well into the snowstorm. Let’s say he was on the earlier one and they decided to try and operate it anyway. So they board, but then when they’re ready to go they get an ATC delay – all too common as the weather deteriorates around big airports like BOS. So they sit in the penalty box in Milwaukee an hour or two, knowing that if they return to the gate and deplane they might miss their ATC takeoff window. Eventually they take off, but as they near Boston they have to divert because BOS drops below minimums and is only forecast to get worse. With the east coast being hammered, they probably divert someplace like Syracuse where they may sit on the ground a long time before finding an open gate and an airline willing and able to help them out. If they deplane there is nobody there from Frontier to help them (information, vouchers, alternatives). Or if they instead decide to refuel and return to MKE, getting a fueler at a strange airport is often slow and cumbersome. The crew also could time-out and ruin whatever recovery plans they try. In any of these cases, the passengers have a high likelihood of being stuck on the aircraft 6-8 hours, not getting to Boston, and perhaps being stranded with nothing in a strange airport. Pre-emptive cancelations avoid these types of nightmares.

Calling this “a clear trade-off between airline shareholders and passengers” is complete crap. It's about sound operational decisions and safety. Not pre-canceling a flight like this is setting themselves up for one big fail. Undoubtedly there’s a certain level of judgment call – sometimes airlines pre-cancel too aggressively or not aggressively enough. But this particular storm they appear to have been right on the money. And if they had not been as aggressive with the pre-emptive cancels, this author might well have been stuck in Syracuse and left to fend for himself.