Canceled flights in good weather: Why it’s not a bad idea

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.