Boston Cancelled More Flights Than Anywhere Else in America

A slow-moving nor’easter settled over the eastern seaboard this weekend and turned an ordinary late-September Saturday into one of the worst travel days of the autumn. By Saturday afternoon roughly 3,000 flights had been delayed and more than 430 cancelled nationwide, with the damage heavily concentrated in the Northeast. Boston Logan was the single worst-affected airport in the country, with about 260 cancellations and more than 200 delays on the day according to FlightAware. Coastal flood warnings covered stretches of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey, and gusts reached roughly 60 miles per hour along exposed coastline.

The disruption was not confined to aviation. Amtrak cancelled several trains after downed wires along the Northeast Corridor, and ferry services on Cape Cod and in Rhode Island suspended sailings. Cruise passengers got their own version: Royal Caribbean’s Vision of the Seas abandoned a planned Canada and New England itinerary and turned south for Florida and the Bahamas instead, while ships running to Bermuda from New York pushed through heavy swell offshore. Several lines adjusted embarkation windows rather than cancel outright, which left passengers with changed ports and, in some cases, an unexpectedly different holiday.

Airlines moved ahead of the storm in the way they usually do now. JetBlue issued a change and cancellation fee waiver covering travel from Friday September 25 through Sunday September 27 across a long list of Northeast and Mid-Atlantic airports, waiving both the change fee and the fare difference. Most major US carriers put out comparable waivers. The practical advice has not changed: if your flight is inside a waiver window and you have any flexibility at all, moving yourself voluntarily is almost always better than being rebooked automatically once cancellations start cascading.

The recovery is the part that catches people out. Because the storm sat over the region for two days rather than passing through in an afternoon, aircraft and crews ended Saturday badly out of position. Knock-on delays typically persist for a day or two after the weather itself clears, and Sunday and Monday departures out of Boston, Providence, Hartford and the New York airports are the ones most likely to feel it. Anyone flying in or out of New England early this week should check status before leaving for the airport rather than after arriving.

Sources: CNN, NPR