Imagine arriving at the airport and being overwhelmed by a sea of confusion, a traffic jam of bags, and a line of people wrapping around the ticketing counter. A crowd of people are huddled around the airport monitors hoping that their flights will not be yellow or red depicting a delay or cancellation. This is what the airlines like to call off schedule operations (OSO).
With Chicago O’Hare’s Airport being a primary hub for both American and United Airlines, air traffic, delays, and cancellations are imminent on clear days and even worse during bad weather.
Many of the delays that occur at O’Hare are a result of air traffic. In other words: there are too many planes trying to get the same place at the same time. The best way to understand air traffic (ATC) is to think of it as rush hour in the air. During OSO the already existing problem of ATC is enhanced. If crosswinds exceed the safe limits, the four runways used at O’Hare are decreased, and the allowed landings of 100 per hour are dropped to under 70 an hour. “At that time, airlines are given the option of cancelling flights to stay under the cap, or accept huge delays and operate well past midnight” said American Airlines Ramp Manning Coordinator Greg Liebman. If airlines choose to continue normal operations with reduced runways many planes are left circling (in holding patterns) in the air or on the tarmac(ground stop) for hours awaiting on a departure slot. If an airplane is left in a holding pattern and exceeds it fuel, flights are then diverted to other cities.
“What happened in JFK on Feb. 14 was an overload of the system, lack of space, and poor communication,” said an American Airlines Captain. “As a result of planes being stuck on the tarmac or in other cities, flight crews were not able to make it to their flights, eventually leading up to cancellations and delays.
Because smaller carriers such as Jetblue don’t have interline agreements with larger carriers, passengers are left with no other choice but to remain on that specific airline. In Jetblue’s case the high passenger volume on Feb. 14 created an overload of their reservations system; leaving passengers stranded until they were able reschedule a flight. All (of this) could have been avoided with the cancellations of the flights” said Greg Leibman.
Most recently, Chicago experienced a major snow and ice storm forcing many of airline passengers to be stranded for up to three days in what many passengers like to call Camp O’Hare. Instead of the airline canceling many of their flights prior to the storm a major airline opted to reduce their schedule. Passengers were not able to be rerouted through Dallas, Texas, the alternative connecting city, because they had their own issue of hurricane force winds to deal with. When the airline realized that things were getting out of hand, all flights departing O’Hare were cancelled at the same time, leaving thousands of passengers stranded and nowhere to go.
Living in the post Sept. 11 world, airlines have struggled to survive as a result of low passenger traffic, intense competition, and high jet fuel costs. In order to meet the demand of these factors, avoid bankruptcy, and avoid inconveniencing their passengers, airlines were forced to take cost cutting measures such as massive employee layoffs, omitting amenities such as dinner, pillows, and water in economy class. Now that passenger traffic is returning to its pre Sept 11 state, it is harder for airlines to function during OSO days due to lack of manpower. Often gates are shut down during bad weather because ground crews are pulled from them in order to meet the demands of de-icing. Flight crews exceed their legal flying time and there are not enough flight attendants or pilots on reserve to replace them.
“In the past when the bookings were not as high as they are now, airlines such as American were able to cancel a huge amount of flights prior to bad weather and still recover. Things have gotten worse (since then),” said Liebman.