In the middle of the season’s first northeaster Sunday morning, only two of the 16 American Airlines flights scheduled to leave from Logan International Airport took to the skies. Why did those two planes – one to London, the other to St. Thomas – fly amid swirling snow while the others were canceled?
For airlines, it’s a complex decision-making process that goes beyond simply keeping planes out of the path of nasty weather. The chess game begins days before a storm hits and takes into account where the plane came from, where it’s heading next, how many passengers onboard have connections, and where the flight crew needs to be, among other factors.
New Department of Transportation regulations will lead to even more flight cancellations, said Peter Belobaba, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Global Airline Industry Program. Under the new rules, airlines can’t keep passengers on the tarmac for more than three hours, which may prompt some carriers to cancel flights rather than face a steep fine.
But airlines are used to dealing with adversity. As Belobaba likes to tell his students: “It’s like a Broadway play that you’ve practiced and practiced for months, and something always goes wrong.’’
