Week Heaps Havoc on Top Of '07 Air Travel Headaches

New Backups Shred Area Airports' Schedules

The holiday season hasn't exactly brought good cheer to air travelers already besieged by near-record-setting flight delays this year.

In recent days, a potent mix of bad weather, airline scheduling snafus and congested skies has snarled travelers' plans. On some days, nearly half of all flights were delayed or canceled across the nation, according to an independent flight-tracking service and preliminary government figures.

"Icy and wintry weather affected the airports," said Mike Sammartino, the Federal Aviation Administration's director of operations. "The best laid plans can't contend with Mother Nature."

Yesterday, thousands of travelers were late returning home from Christmas after low clouds and rain blanketed New York's bustling airports. Meanwhile, a snowstorm hammered Denver, forcing carriers to cancel scores of flights.

On Wednesday, nearly 40 percent of flights were delayed or canceled nationwide because of high traffic levels, thunderstorms, low clouds and snow, according to preliminary FAA data.

Just over 40 percent of arrivals into Reagan National, 34 percent into Dulles International and 32 percent into BWI Marshall were delayed or canceled Wednesday, the flight-tracking service FlightStats.com reported.

Weekend fliers fared even worse: About half of all flights were delayed or canceled Friday through Sunday, according to FAA officials who blamed bad weather in the Chicago, New York and Dallas areas for the backups. When fog forced officials to shut down National Airport for several hours Sunday, only 23 percent of arriving flights were on time, according to FlightStats.

Yesterday, the FAA reported few delays at the three local airports.

The week's travel woes are a continuation of delays that have rained on passengers all year. Through October, the last month of available data, about 26 percent of flights were delayed or canceled, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. It was the second-worst performance since 1995. Flights in 2000 performed slightly worse.

In recent days, passengers on United Airlines suffered some of the most serious snarls, as the carrier reacted to winter storms that slugged its major airports.

United canceled about 145 departures and arrivals at its Denver hub yesterday, accounting for about 17 percent of its operations at the airport, as a storm blanketed the area with snow, a spokeswoman said.

Four of the canceled flights yesterday were to have arrived at or departed from Dulles or National, the spokeswoman said.

The Denver cancellations followed some other recent rough patches for the carrier, which struggled to recover from winter storms at its major base in Chicago over the weekend. United aggressively worked to complete schedules Saturday and Sunday to get passengers to their destinations for the holidays, said Megan McCarthy, a United spokeswoman.

But during the next few days, the carrier had difficulty getting planes and pilots back on their proper schedules, forcing the carrier to cancel about 600 flights, or about 6 percent of its operations Monday through Wednesday, McCarthy said.

"We are making efforts to accommodate our customers," McCarthy said. The carrier's pilots union blamed poor decision-making by executives, not the weather, for the cancellations that extended beyond weekend storms. The union said the carrier faces a pilot shortage.

Travelers with United tickets could face more problems today. The Chicago area is in the path of a storm that could dump up to seven inches of snow on the area, according to the National Weather Service. McCarthy urged passengers flying United today to check the status of their flight at the carrier's Web site before going to the airport.

United wasn't the only carrier to suffer delays and cancellations in recent days. On Wednesday, for example, about 30 percent of US Airways flights were delayed or canceled, according to FlightStats.

American Airlines suffered worse: Forty-five percent of its flights were late or canceled that day, the tracking service reported, because low clouds forced controllers to curtail operations at the carrier's major Dallas hub.