Weather Meltdown 12/22

[3WE]

Interestingly, this is personal. Young MS 3WE flew from BWI to MKC THE VERY NIGHT THE BIG STORM hit.

Every indication was that they would get in sort of as it hit. There was a 30 min delay from BWI due to crew's not being there yet. The flight arrived during an initial snowshower as temperatures went from 35 to 30F , and MS 3WE's boyfriend felt there was a pretty good crab angle, but they didn't died and we arrived back at the hotel with a thin coating of ice on the low altitude Cessna 206 (sarcasm for our car).

Iroiningly, even though the storm had passed, this same flight was canceled the day AFTER the storm. I know the AIRPORT was open, and the weather was IMC and windy, but I suspect that they were scared of rampie, deicer people and agent shortages.

Today, I read that the whole WN system dominoed and they aren't even TALKING about rebooking for four more days.

I also read of government inquires- because it appears WN melted down while the other airlines kept going (no doubt with hiccups, but not as bad as WN).

Analysis: Might be something to the effect of WN tending to more smaller hubs (vs the majors and their UBER hubs)...Meaning the dominoes keep falling whereas at an UBER hub, you can screw over folks regionally and adjust and just take ONE day off as your hub gets nailed...but I doubt our gubment inquriy will 1) Find anything 2) Satisfy Evan, and hell even TeeVee might let WN go and just bash the industry as a whole.

And 3BS is actually going to say that SHORT OF going back to regulation and Fat Dumb and Happy fares and equipment and staffing, there's no fixing this.

[3WE]

An update: WN is apparently canceling upwards of 2/3 of their flights on 12/27 and 12/28 due to crew availability and plane locations extremely out of whack…

This does look a bit bad since the storm was fairly short lived, often not excessive in snow amounts and now gone for few days.

[3WE]

Damn: I wasn’t going to rant:

I would favor a big government crackdown and regulation to control booking/rebooking/stand by fees.

Bull crap that that changed from a very open, low cost service to one way rape and pillage customers.

So now you have gross standings and inconsistent application of rebooking fees.

Gabe had his story of the airline changing his flight and huge fees… and now WN won’t even TALK to people

Footnote: Yes, web booking of THE LOWEST LOWEST LOWEST fare.

[flyboy2548m]

This does look a bit bad since the storm was fairly short lived, often not excessive in snow amounts and now gone for few days.

1. The storm was active for 3 days, which, in airline terms, is a lifetime.
2. The storm went through the busiest travel areas of the country.
3. Some stations are still dealing with aftereffects (frozen equipment, damaged equipment etc.)

All that being said, I don't disagree that the system has very little resilience built into it. Pretty much no airline has any extra resources to accommodate any large disruption.

[3WE]

This does look a bit bad since the storm was fairly short lived, often not excessive in snow amounts and now gone for few days.

1. The storm was active for 3 days [3BS modification] and very widespread.

Indeed.

In many ways, it’s just another storm during maximum travel times.

I find this an interesting study as WN is being tabbed as worse than the others.

I can imagine that the majors and their Uber-hubs are better at being resilient, and screwing over more limited areas as the storm progresses, and a gentler rolling recovery.

WN appears to have many more mini hubs, thus I can see how the wideners and duration would hit them worse.

[3WE]

Pretty much no airline has any extra resources to accommodate any large disruption.

Wrong.

It is WN’s Greyhound management style. They should be broken up.

[Not_Karl]

The ironing of fluffy frozen water causing a meltdown.

[3WE]

Upon further reading, there’s gossip that WNs computer systems went Y2K…and this is perhaps the real cause. (Triggered by weather and high demand, but…)

Seems believable.

[ocelot]

Upon further reading, there’s gossip that WNs computer systems went Y2K…and this is perhaps the real cause. (Triggered by weather and high demand, but…)

That seems to be the case from what I've seen. So I doubt we'll ever find out what really happened.