The Airlines' Eyes on the Skies

To keep close contact with American's flight dispatchers and operations workers, Weather Services International stationed its meteorologists in the same office they had occupied as American employees. It has six full- or part-time meteorologists assigned to American's operations center; other meteorologists work out of another office to help with forecasts for American and the firm's other clients.

Other airlines have made similar cuts, saying they have reduced costs and that they get better forecasts from third parties. United Airlines got rid of its 19-person team in 2005 and hired Ensco, which is headquartered in Falls Church, to generate its forecasts. Low-cost carriers such as JetBlue have generally shied away from the expense of employing in-house weather staffs.

At least two carriers, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, have kept their teams despite going through recent bankruptcy reorganizations.

The work of airline meteorologists, whether as airline employees or at contractors, has historically generated little public attention. But recent incidents have put them in the spotlight. American's meteorologists -- not including Mabey -- didn't predict the duration of thunderstorms that whacked the carrier's hub here in December and April, forcing American to divert nearly as many flights each day as it did on Sept. 11, 2001, American executives said.

The highest-profile airline weather fiasco occurred on Feb. 14, when JetBlue's executives thought government and contractor forecasts indicated that an ice storm would relent over New York. It didn't. Scores of flights were canceled, and hundreds of passengers were trapped on planes for as long as 10 hours. Mabey said he doesn't worry too much about making a mistake -- it's all part of a job that sometimes relies more on gut instincts than on computer models.

On Thanksgiving Day 1993, he predicted little chance of an ice storm because he did not believe the temperature would drop low enough to turn the rain to ice. He was wrong, and American was caught off-guard. Ice strangled its Texas hub, stranding jets all over the tarmac. He still remembers his disappointment.

"It was so close, 32 to 33 degrees, and I thought it would be rain," Mabey recalled. "It was a disaster. It was real ice storm. It killed our operations. Thank goodness it was a holiday and there were fewer flights."

He has also saved the carrier money and operational snarls. Before a recent wind and dust storm, Mabey was checking government forecasts and computer models and thought they weren't predicting high enough winds. He decided to forecast gusts up to 50 mph, a speed that would prevent many planes from safely taking off or landing. It was a gutsy call because the forecast would force American's executives to begin to cancel flights in advance of the storm.

The high winds did develop -- starting and diminishing within a half-hour of Mabey's predictions.

"The meteorologists really hit that one right on the mark," said Robert W. Reding, senior vice president of technical operations for American.

On the iffy Monday last month, Mabey had been wrestling with the forecast since he started his shift at 6:30 a.m. His computer models predicted various outcomes: no chance of thunderstorms, a risk of thunderstorms, a 40 to 60 percent chance of thunderstorms and a near guarantee of scattered to severe thunderstorms. Radar images hinted at potential thunderstorms east of Dallas, and government forecasts put the chance at about 30 percent.

Mabey said he didn't want to simply report that there was a good chance of thunderstorms. He wasn't convinced they would show up, thinking it would not get hot enough "to set them off."

"You don't want to be too pessimistic because then you burn fuel," he said. "But if you are too optimistic, you can get burned, too. The tough part about today is that you don't see anything now, really. But you have to plan for two, three, four hours down the road."

Then, about noon, just as he was about to finish his forecast, he looked at another computer model and radar images of rain east of Dallas. He heard a computer beep behind him. He turned and watched as the computer's monitor began to map lightning strikes near Dallas. "Hmm," he said several times before heading to the windows to take a peek at the building storm clouds. "This is the kind of torture you put yourself through."

By 1:30 p.m., he decided to parse the forecast carefully, writing that the storms should remain near Dallas but that he "can't rule out" that they might pop up around American's hub at nearby Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

That afternoon and evening, as thunderstorms rattled Dallas, only a few small ones developed close to the airport. Lightning forced workers to shut the ramp for about half an hour.

There were no diversions.