iahphx

It's perhaps a 5-year storm cycle, but it's AT LEAST a 10-year scenario where a winter storm of this magnitude falls on a peak travel weekend. Obviously, if this storm hit mid week in January (far more likely) it would be far less of a big deal, and there would be significantly fewer travellers affected.

BOS2DCA

Even in New England, this was an unusual for December. Boston averages 7" of snow in December, considerably more in Jan and Feb. Also, usually a storm affects one or two major areas (NY Metro and BOS, for example) and not the mid-atlantic, so this is truly epic that snow managed to paralyze every major hub in the Northeast corridor.

mustangthz

Is there an easy way to change flights on-line? My flight tomorrow was canceled and the estimated hold time is 250 minutes

jbird82

Well I just came back from DCA and let me tell you, I've never seen an airport as crazy as this was tonight. Customer service lines were probably a hundred people long. My flight was cancelled and I was lucky enough to get through to a Service Rep on the phone after about 15 minutes. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure I'd still be standing in line waiting to rebook my flight.

For those familiar with gate 35, you should've seen that area tonight...absolute insanity.

jbird82

You should try different options when dialing. When I was trying to get through most times I was getting a busy signal or told to call back later, but eventually one of the options I chose got me in a 15 minute queue.

BOS2DCA

Boston got 10" of snow, a record for the date.

BoeingBoy

The amounts and timing may have been unusual, but

- Winter 04/05 - US' "Christmas Meltdown", which triggered a DOT IG report

- Winter 06/07 - Feb fiasco

- Winter 09/10 - this storm

That's 3 major disruptions in 5 years, all due to winter storms.

Jim

uva185

Hahaha, I can only imagine!!!

pheller

I thought the DOT report on Xmas 04 was pretty clear that the issue (at least with US) was related to staffing shortages, no?

Then again, I am biased, considering that I slept on the floor of the ticketing hall of PHL on 12/24/04....

BoeingBoy

US staffed for normal ops after a successful Thanksgiving travel period that year - minimum staffing. US tried to blame the employees because of "abnormally high" sick calls but the investigation found that sick calls were no higher than normally occur around Christmas and said that US didn't staff properly for predictable absences.

The weather overwhelmed the available workers and caused the meltdown. In that storm, there were airports from the Ohio Valley to NYC running out of deicing fluid (freezing rain was a big problem with that storm) and Comairs computers shut down when they were unable to handle the volume of changes that flights and/or crews were going through (the IG report also covered that).

While this may have very well been a "once every 10 years" winter storm from a public point of view in general, it was not a "10 year" storm from the perspective of airline ops. As I said in an earlier post, once a storm gets to a certain magnitude, airline ops are severely impacted - anything worse doesn't make much difference. This could have been a "100 year storm" but if it passed through in the same amount of time the effect wouldn't be much worse than this storm or those earlier storms I mentioned.

Jim

BoeingBoy

US staffed for normal ops after a successful Thanksgiving travel period that year - minimum staffing. US tried to blame the employees because of "abnormally high" sick calls but the investigation found that sick calls were no higher than normally occur around Christmas and said that US didn't staff properly for predictable absences.

The weather overwhelmed the available workers and caused the meltdown. In that storm, there were airports from the Ohio Valley to NYC running out of deicing fluid - freezing rain was a big problem south of NYC with that storm.

Like this storm, the problem was misconnects and canceled flights with heavy passenger loads. Passengers were being told that they could get to their destination in 3-4 days because of few available seats. Baggage backed up so bad in PHL - it would arrive and not get out - that 3 days after the storm passed US flew 767's between PHL and PIT/CLT carrying only baggage so it could be sorted out somewhere besides PHL. As bad as this storm disrupted travel plans, the 2004 storm was worse even though it wasn't a "10 year storm".

While this may have very well been a "once every 10 years" winter storm from a public point of view in general (amount of snow so early in the winter), the point I was trying to make was that it was not a "10 year" storm from the perspective of airline ops. As I said in an earlier post, once a storm gets to a certain magnitude, airline ops are severely impacted - anything worse doesn't make much difference. This could have been a "100 year storm" but if it passed through in the same amount of time the effect wouldn't be much worse than this storm or those earlier storms I mentioned.

Jim

fly2nrt

Just to update you all... its been 4 days and I'm still getting hung up on.

wirral

Why dont you guys just call their callcentre in the UK?
Just dial a european number with its country code and your call will most likely be answered immediately. I have done this a few times now and I never waited more than 3 minutes. They are politer, too. as long as you dont mind speaking to a british person, you will be fine!
I tend to call the italian number and select english speaking.
might work out expensive if it is a long call with it being INTL

drjochen

I have done this also - call a center in Europe. It definitely works and the people are soooooo helpful, not the usual grumpy, pissed, "oh my god there calls another one of those stupid customers that wants something from me..." US Air phone reps I usually get in the US.

fly2nrt

Thanks US Airways. The award seats that I wanted are now gone.