US snowstorm causes airport meltdowns

Mammoth snowfall in the northeast of America has left airports in chaos and an outage at Sabre, with travel plans thrown into disarray.

Up to 16 inches fell down overnight, and as many as 3000 flights cancelled last night, with more expected as the snowfall continues.

Most airlines are issuing change fee waivers for travel scheduled for the next couple of days.

Alaska Airlines has issued a fee waiver for anyone flying to or from airports in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Baltimore who purchased tickets on or before February 8 (US time), with travel requiring a rebook by February 17.

If you’ve got passengers with flights booked on American Airlines, if they purchased their ticket by February 7 and are scheduled to travel between February 9 and 10, they can rebook their flight in the same cabin or pay the difference without fee.

JetBlue is waiving change fees and fare differences for all passengers travelling from February 8 to 10 to or from most northeast cities including Baltimore, Boston, New York, Newark, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. A full list of cities and the travel agent waiver code can be found on JetBlue’s website.

Southwest has given the green light to passengers holding tickets for travel in cities affected by the storm on February 9 and 10, to rebook in the original class of service or travel standby within 14 days of their original date to the original destination sans any additional fees.

A full list of the cities can be found on the Southwest website.

United Airlines is another airline waiving change fees for travel between now and February 12, but only if travel is rescheduled in the same cabin and between the same cities as originally ticketed. For a list of all cities included in the waiver, go to the United website.

Virgin America is letting passengers with tickets for flights on February 10 to and from Boston Logan, JFK International Airport, Newark International Airport and LaGuardia Airport to chance their flight without paying fees or differences in fares. But for those not a fan of chancing it, flights can be rebooked for travel through February 17 or cancelled without fees. No waiver code is required for travel agents.

Meanwhile, an insider suggested to Travel Market Report that the weather even caused an outage over at Sabre.

According to travel agents in the US trying to rebook flights on Wednesday prior to the snow, Sabre’s system was down for about 90 minutes. The outage affected reservations on airlines including American, Southwest and Alaska Airlines.

But per Travel Market Report, the company said the system as back online after two hours.

“Airline and travel agency customers reporting normal ops. Our apologies for the disruption. All efforts devoted to rapid resolution,” Sabre said in a statement.

Sabre has said that it is working on determining the “root cause of the disruption” and that the system is fully operational as of Thursday morning.

Image: Travelweek

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