Skift Take
Over the last five years airlines have gone from last-minute cancellations and no flexibility on non-refundable tickets to a very pro-active stance where flights are cancelled and tickets refunded or rebooked with much less fuss. Flyers may not get to their destination, but they're less likely to go crazy not getting there than before.
As yet another winter storm rambled across the upper half of the United States this week, a time-honored tradition set in: hundreds of flight cancellations struck travelers in a coordinated wave just ahead of the storm’s leading edge. At the very least, it’s an inconvenience for the tens of thousands of people trying to get where they’re going; at worst, a severe weather disruption can have an economic impact of hundreds of millions of dollars.
But for many travelers — including a group of Verge employees trying to get to SXSW — there was no nail-biting in the hours leading up to the storm. That’s because their flights had been canceled on Wednesday, long before the winter blast had even arrived.
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Tags: climate change