WiNK
Flight Cancellations Cause Travelers to Scramble
by: Melissa RainvilleAs you may have heard or experienced, it has been a tough time for air travel lately. Between hundreds and thousands of flights and other forms of transportation have been getting canceled. The reason for this ranges from short staff, bad weather, overbooking, and the FAA grounding flights this week over a computer outage. So far last week, Southwest and American Airlines contained the most amount of cancellations. Last week, Southwest was leading the pack with 557 flights canceled compared to 13,699 flights scheduled. This week United and Southwest take the lead. Many students and families of Wooster had first-hand experience with this, especially during Winter break.
On Monday, January 2, Anya Ionis, '25, and her family were supposed to be on an Allegiant flight back to New York from Florida, however after three hours of sitting in the airport over the flight time, the flight was announced as canceled because of the fog and severe weather. The next available flight was on Thursday. So instead, Anya and her family drove from Florida to New York on Monday, January 2nd at 11 am and arrived on Tuesday, January 3rd at 7 am. They had to rent a car from the Florida airport in order to drive home.
Lily Cristini, '26, and her family went through an ordeal on their way back from Jamaica. Lily reports, "We realized the flight was canceled when we got to the airport. It kept delaying. First, it was 2:00 then it was 3:00 then it got a 5-hour delay to 7:00. Luckily we paid for a nice place in the airport where there is comfortable seating and food for free. We were stuck there until 7:00 pm and our van got us there at 11:00 am. Delta Airlines did apologize and gave everyone free food and snacks. My sister and I also met the pilot and went into the cockpit. We did have a connecting flight to get back to New York. By the time the Jamaica flight got into Atlanta our connecting flight took off so we stayed in Atlanta for one night and then caught our flight to New York early in the morning."
Other sources with helpful information on the most amount of flights being canceled by airlines and cities:
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/travel-insurance/us-flight-cancellations-01-05-2023/