Flights canceled as snow hits Northeast U.S.
Fri Mar 16, 2007
NEW YORK, March 16 (Reuters) - Winter returned to the northeastern United States on Friday after a period of spring-like weather with snowstorms forcing airlines to cancel hundreds of flights.
Snow and rain halted ground transportation at New York's LaGuardia Airport and Philadelphia International, with many airports from Washington to Boston experiencing delays.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning covering most of the territory over states from Pennsylvania to Maine with heavy snow warnings for some areas.
The Weather Channel forecast 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 cm) of snow in some areas.
JetBlue Airways Corp. <JBLU.O> canceled 235 flights, aiming to avoid its troubles of a month ago when passengers were trapped in grounded aircraft for up to 10 hours because of the weather.
US Airways Group Inc. <LCC.N> canceled 150 flights, mostly because of the backup at Philadelphia and LaGuardia, a spokesman said. Delta Air Lines Inc. <DALRQ.PK> announced on Thursday it was canceling 250 flights, and a spokesman for American Airlines, part of AMR Corp. <AMR.N>, said the airline canceled 120 flights.
Most of JetBlue's canceled flights were to and from New York's John F. Kennedy airport, where the worst of its Valentine's Day service fiasco took place.
JetBlue Airways said it would cost $30 million or more to reimburse the 130,000 or so passengers affected by canceled flights in February, leading to a fall in its share price.
The low-cost carrier, which has won fans in the past for its reluctance to cancel flights because of bad weather, blamed last month's problems on its inability to cope with rescheduling so many flight crews.
In response the company unveiled the "JetBlue Customer Bill of Rights," a sliding scale of reimbursements for delayed flights that offers the value of a round-trip ticket for flights that are four or more hours late.