A September Storm Cost LaGuardia Six Hundred Flights

Nor’easters are a winter word. This one arrived in September. A coastal storm tracking up the eastern seaboard began affecting airports on Friday and is forecast to keep going into Sunday 27 September, with the heaviest impacts running from North Carolina through New England. By Friday afternoon nearly 600 flights in and out of LaGuardia were delayed, and Boston Logan had logged 60 delays and 66 cancellations. The National Weather Service forecast gusts to around 40 mph in the Boston area and up to 44 mph over New York City — not extreme numbers on paper, but sustained onshore wind is precisely what forces airports onto reduced arrival rates.

The airports carrying the most risk through the weekend are Boston Logan, the three New York metro fields at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark, Philadelphia, and Baltimore/Washington plus Dulles. Wind-driven delays at hub airports do not stay local. Aircraft and crews that should have reached Boston on Friday evening are not where Saturday’s schedule assumed they would be, which is how a storm over Cape Cod produces a late departure in Denver. Travellers flying anywhere in the eastern half of the country this weekend should check status before leaving for the airport even if their own city has clear skies.

American, Delta and United have all issued travel waivers covering the affected airports, allowing rebooking without change fees over roughly Friday to Sunday. The fine print matters: American’s waiver applies to tickets bought by 23 September for travel 25 to 27 September, with rebooking in the same cabin for travel through 29 September. Fare-difference rules vary by carrier and by route, so the cheapest move is usually to rebook through the airline’s app rather than waiting in a queue at the airport, where agents are working the same limited inventory as everyone else.

Cruise passengers are affected too. Royal Caribbean redirected Vision of the Seas, which was due to leave Baltimore on 24 September for Canada and New England, to Florida and the Bahamas instead — a complete reversal of direction to keep the ship away from the storm. That is an unusually blunt itinerary change, and a reminder that for sailings out of mid-Atlantic ports the weather does not have to be a hurricane to rewrite the week. Guests on affected sailings should expect port substitutions rather than cancellations.

Sources: CNBC, AirlineGeeks