Airport Snow Days Felt In Warm Weather Areas Too
This past week's nasty winter weather left a lot of travelers stranded. Airline passengers vented their frustration, and airline analysts said the tough winter has been hard on financially squeezed airlines. An inn keeper in Key West, Fla., says those flight cancellations have hurt this business.
Mr. DWAIN SCULTON(ph): Two weeks ago, I was stranded in Saskatchewan for a couple of days' worth of blizzards. So it just seems to be following me around.
CHRIS ARNOLD: I'm Chris Arnold, and that's Dwain Sculton, a stranded passenger at the airport in Hagerstown, Maryland. The winter storms have caused massive disruptions at 10 major airports across much of the eastern U.S., and the impact is being felt thousands of miles away, everywhere those passengers were trying to get to.
Ms. JANE LOWE (Owner, The Tropical Inn): Oh, yeah. This weekend should have been our peak weekend of the entire high season. It's a long weekend, a holiday weekend, and Valentine's Day.
ARNOLD: Jane Lowe owns the Tropical Inn in Key West, Florida. She runs the small family business with her husband and daughter.
Ms. LOWE: We had a lot of people coming in to celebrate Valentine's Day. In fact, we had three couples traveling together from the Northeast yesterday, had five-night reservations, due in yesterday, and they had to cancel because their flight was canceled.
ARNOLD: Lowe says it would be one thing if the storm just delayed people by a day or so. But as her Valentine's Day customers from Maryland found out, this storm has really tangled up the airlines.
Ms. LOWE: They were told that the earliest they could get out would be Sunday.
ARNOLD: Really?
Ms. LOWE: Yeah. That's how backed up whatever airport they were flying out of was.
ARNOLD: Lowe says business is already down with the recession, so this doesn't help. Of course, if you've ever been stuck in an airport, it's hard to ever feel much sympathy for the airlines themselves. But these storms are costing them a lot of money, too. Airlines have had to scramble planes and flight crews around the country, and put lots of employees up in hotels. John Pincavage is a consultant and financial adviser for the airlines.
Mr. JOHN PINCAVAGE (Airline Consultant and Financial Adviser): The airline industry really isn't out of the woods. Many, many of them lost money last year. They're all very hopeful that this year's going to be a better year for them. But it's very easy for them to have earnings problems and experience losses again, just simply because only one or two things have to go wrong.
ARNOLD: This round of storms may not do irreparable damage, but it's looking to be a lot costlier than most. David Castelveter is with the airline trade group the Air Transport Association. He estimates upwards of 13,000 flights were canceled over the past week, affecting hundreds of thousands of people.
Mr. DAVID CASTELVETER (The Air Transport Association): This has been a sizeable weather event, one of the most significant as it relates to the disruption of air travel, in over a decade.
ARNOLD: Still, the airlines and hotels might be doing better in a few weeks. The Key West Inn Keepers Association, in Florida, says that these winter storms often create a rebound as lots of people decide to get out of the cold and head south.
Chris Arnold, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
