Apparently there was a kerfuffle at O’Hare today and 200 flights were cancelled.
Assuming flights return to normal tomorrow, how do the airlines find space to get these people to their destinations? These days, flights are overbooked as a matter of course, so it’s not as if those other flights have a bunch of empty seats.
I realize some people will no longer need to travel - they’ve already missed the wedding, the job interview, the garlic festival, and will be satisfied with a voucher for travel at a later time. But what about all the ones who still need to reach their destination or are heading home? Do the airlines just make higher and higher offers to people willing to be bumped? I can see how that might work on a small scale, but what about when massive storms hit over the holidays and cancel thousands of flights?
Chicago Center went offline because of a fire deliberately set. Some 2,000 flights were canceled between O’Hare and Midway. The incident is still ongoing and may extend into Saturday.
United Airlines is attempting to accommodate travelers, but since this was not arline-caused, it looks like you are on your own. Same for Delta.
I have no idea about any of this, but I remember being very surprised when I flew between Spain and Holland after flights having been canceled for several days (I don’t remember why, strike?). I was lucky that my flight was one of the first to go as scheduled afterwards. The surprising part was that the plane was half empty despite large numbers of people having been stranded at the airport the previous days.
Each airline has a priority scheme they use to decide who to accommodate how.
In general in my experience it’s benign neglect. If flight 1 is cancelled, all displaced passengers will be wait-listed on flight 2. We are NOT going to be buying anyone off flight 2 to make room for folks bumped from flight 1. And all passengers originally ticketed for flight 2 will have priority over all passengers rolling over from flight 1.
Flight 2 will take as many flight 1 passengers as can fit, period. Anyone left over from flight 1 will then be wait listed on flight 3.
As nature takes its course the number of flight 1 folks left willing to wait for flight 8 two days later is darn few. Eventually everybody is accommodated or has canceled their trip or traveled via another method, e.g. rental car.
When there is a single location disruption like Chicago had, one of the strange results is that many of the first flights leaving after the disruption will be mostly empty. Why? Because at hub airports, the vast majority of outbound passengers are people who should have been inbound passengers an hour or so before. If they never arrived due to the disruption, they aren’t at the hub to be outbound passengers.
My gf was returning to Pittsburgh from a business trip to Atlanta. She was supposed to fly Atlanta to Chicago to Pittsburgh via USAir and arrive around 8pm. Instead she flew Delta Atlanta to Pittsburgh nonstop and arrived around 6:45.
It took me four hours to get to the office Wednesday, a trip of about 115 miles. As I sat in traffic around Lynnwood, WA, the guy on the radio said ‘If you’re in Everett and want to get to Seattle [<30 miles – JLA], you could find someone with a private plane to fly you to Bellingham [89 miles to Seattle , 61 miles to Everett-- JLA] and get a flight on Horizon Air from Bellingham to Seattle and still be there sooner than if you drove.’
It looks like average load factor for a flight these days is 84.1, which means that for every 100 seats on an airplane, ~16 of them are empty. Of course, some planes are completely full, and some are half empty, but that’s the average. I’d be curious to see if it’s different for flights into and out of a major hub like Chicago. As a side note, this is up considerably from past years, which is a good part of airlines’ improved profitability (fees for everything being another major part.)
I’d imagine between people who are only using Chicago as a hub, and can reroute through Houston, Denver, DC, Atlanta, Newark, etc instead, plus those who get on empty seats on later flights, plus those who don’t need to take the trip and take the travel voucher for later instead, these types of one-off disruptions dissipate fairly quickly.
A few days ago my SEA-AMS flight was cancelled. It had been about a 6 hour delay and I was at the desk asking about re-route options. Because of the Air France strike, I wanted to avoid Paris and knowing a lot about who flies where, I asked if they could rebook me via Iceland and they did.
Much better to have a real person do the rebooking than waiting for the computer to auto-rebook you.
Pro-tip: When you are at the airport and your flight cancels, do NOT just get in line with everybody else to await your turn with the gate agent for re-booking. Instead start walking away then call the central reservations number on your mobile. Unless they are having a system-wide meltdown, you’ll be rebooked before the poor gate agent(s) will have finished 2 or 3 of the umpteen hundred folks in line at the gate.
Why do I suggest you walk away first? So you don’t give all the rest of the folks sitting around you in the gate area the same idea. This technique is hardly a secret, but every person who doesn’t suddenly get clued in is one less person you’re competing with for space on some other flight.
I wasn’t thinking of this at the time I posted the OP, but this scenario (several years back) was why I finally broke down and got myself a personal cell phone. Everyone else was clearly making alternative plans while I was still trying to get off the plane.
Interesting replies, thanks everyone.
Duckster, I called it a kerfuffle because no one died (as far as I know, - I haven’t checked today’s updates) and there wasn’t massive property damage like we see with hurricanes and such. And I like the word. Kerfuffle, kerfuffle, kerfuffle.
One time in the '90s I missed my connecting flight from MSY to LAX and thought I might be stuck wherever Continental’s hub was in Texas. I did stand in the line. The guy ahead of me was very angry, and he showed it. When I got to the agent, I was sympathetic and asked if there was anything she could do. (i.e., I asked nicely for help.) I got a 1st Class seat on the next flight out. The guy before me didn’t.
I have head that happen a few times as well. Airline agents can be quite spiteful if someone is mean to them and there is no law that says they have to treat everyone equally. That is one case where assertiveness or more aggressive behavior certainly does not work and will probably backfire.
However, if you stay calm, let them know that you know it isn’t their personal fault but you could still use a little help, you will often get it. It also helps if you always wear clothes appropriate for business or first-class even if you have a coach ticket. During unexpected situations, they can move certain people to 1st class for free but you have to look like you belong there. The guy with saggy jeans and a baseball cap turned around backwards and the lady in the mu-mu wearing flip-flops are still going to sitting on the ground while you and your polo shirt are sailing across the sky sipping complimentary champagne.
They only fly something like 2500 flights per day at ORD so the numbers don’t add up. they were back flying in the afternoon at both airports.
This affects more than just ORD or MDW because the radar center handles a region. But they can pick up some of the difference by extending the radar centers that surround the Chicago area. As long as they can keep proper separation they should be able to scale things back up. They should be able to temporarily farm out the controllers to the surround areas.
In a situation like the one in Chicago, the first thing to do is to have status on the airline you’re flying. Airlines will try to rebook all passengers, but some are more equal that others. United is going to rebook that 1K guy long before they bother with a peon like me, even if I’ve actually paid more for my ticket. My road-warrior friends insist that the big perk of high status in a frequent-flyer program isn’t the free travel or upgrades, but instead is being taken care of when things go pear-shaped.
LSLGuy is absolutely right about not bothering with agents in the airport, with one exception. An agent in the airline’s club can do wonders, and is a much better resource than the agent on the 800 number. Of course, to get access to the club, you probably have to have status, or an expensive credit card.
I haven’t noticed that dressing well really helps anymore. Airlines are much better at data mining, and rewarding spending accordingly. Of course, you should still be on your best behavior with everyone in such situations. Being nasty to an agent isn’t going to help you, while being nice might get you that last middle seat in the last row, which is still better than being stuck at the airport.
Even better than calling is if you have access to the airline’s fancy lounge, go there and ask THEIR booking people. The people at the regular desk were awful to me at Newark once - said the only other flight home (in seven hours) was full and they’d have to send me through Chicago and I wouldn’t get home until the next day… and here’s seven bucks for lunch. The lady at the Sky Club or whatever it was (I think Delta was sharing with some other airline for the lounge or something) got me on that 10 PM flight… which was almost empty.
At many carriers non-club members can buy a one-day pass to the club at the door for ~$50. Depending on the rest of your situation that might be money well spent. Especially if it’s the difference that lets you avoid an overnight.
I did just this when we (my family and I) flew into Detroit in January during the infamous polar vortex when lots (dozens, hundreds, thousands?) of flights were cancelled due to cold weather. I had one more leg on my trip that was cancelled. I got on the phone to the airline to see if I could arrange something quicker than the hundreds of people in line at the ticket counters.
Fat chance. I was told that the earliest they could get me on another plane to PA was in TWO friggin’ days. If I wanted a hotel room, I was told to get in line with the other lemmings… but there were no hotel rooms left anywhere near the airport. While I tried another airline number, my wife got on the phone to car rental places and reserved a car. We ended up driving for 12 hours (that evening and the next day) to get home. I was a day late and out a couple hundred bucks for a rental car and another couple hundred for two hotel rooms. Thanks, United.
