Logan cancels flights in droves

February 22, 2008 02:00 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff

At Logan International Airport, airlines are already canceling flights in droves in expectation of today's winter storm throwing flight schedules into chaos. By 1:30 p.m., at least 54 arriving flights and 68 departing flights had been canceled, according to the Massachusetts Port Authority website. Logan normally handles about 1,100 incoming and departing flights daily.

Flights that have been canceled include many likely to be popular with families returning from vacations in Florida during the public school vacation week, including American's flight from Miami due to arrive at 3:30 p.m., Delta flights from West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale landing soon after that, and JetBlue flights due to arrive about 6:30 p.m. from Fort Myers and Orlando.

Families pushed off those flights could have a hard time rebooking flights Saturday or Sunday because airlines are expecting many flights those days to operate 95 to 100 percent full, because of the heavy vacation week travel.

"The airport has been open, but we started getting delays and cancellations around 6 o'clock this morning because of storm conditions and weather problems at other East Coast airports, particularly the three New York-area airports and Philadelphia,'' said Logan spokesman Phil Orlandella. Delays of three to six hours at those airports began snarling Logan-bound traffic long before any snowflakes showed in Boston, Orlandella said.

Orlandella said Logan plowing crews were anticipating 6 to 9 inches of snow by 9 p.m. "There should be no problem by Saturday morning,'' Orlandella said, aside from airlines facing hassles rebooking travelers whose flights got canceled today.

Because their operating schedules are so tight, with planes scheduled to fly anywhere from 10 to 14 hours a day, airlines will quickly cancel flights in and out of cities like Boston experiencing storms so that they don't get aircraft stuck here that are scheduled to fly later today and Saturday to other destinations. By early afternoon today, hours before the worst of the storm had arrived, Delta Air Lines, for example, had already canceled incoming and outbound flights as far out as 7 p.m., including inbound flights from Baltimore, Charleston, S.C., and Cincinnati.