Flight cancellations spiked in the first month after the federal government got tough on airlines for parking planes on the tarmac for hours and stranding passengers.
New statistics reveal that airlines nationwide canceled 6,716 flights in May, up 40 percent from May 2009.
“I’d bet the rent that the new rule didn’t help,” said travel industry expert Terry Trippler. “It wouldn’t surprise me if well over half of the increase was due to the legislation.”
May was the first full month that airplanes were barred from sitting on the taxiway for more than three hours without unloading the passengers. The airlines face stiff fines — up to $27,500 a passenger — if they violate the rule.
Facing big fines, the industry predicted that aircraft would return to the gate if there was even a hint that it wouldn’t meet the three-hour mandate.
Five tarmac delays of three hours or more occurred during May. The federal government is investigating to see if those delays, indeed, violated the rule.
Tarmac delays of three hours or more have continued to decline since a peak of 268 in June 2009. The most this year: 60 in February.
Federal aviation authorities dismissed the May increase as not being meaningful.
Only 1.2 percent of 542,000 flights were canceled in May, but that was still more than a third higher than the percentage in May 2009, when 0.88 percent of 546,000 fights were canceled.
Trippler acknowledged that May might be an anomaly and June might be a better indicator of the rule’s impact.
The airline industry predicted increased flight cancellations after the tarmac rule started in May, but it wasn’t ready to gloat about its predictions coming true.
Many of the airline officials interviewed blamed the increased cancellations on bad weather, although they conceded that the tarmac rule could have played a small part.
“The good, old-fashioned reason is weather and air traffic control delays and the kinds of cancellations we’ve always faced,” said American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith.
American’s cancellations in May were up about 28 percent year over year.
“I think you could arguably say these numbers are pretty random. There’s no constant trend,” Smith said this week.
Southwest Airlines had about a 5 percent increase in cancellations in May 2010 from May 2009.
Spokesman Chris Mainz blamed the increase on bad weather and other factors, not the tarmac delay rule.
Delta Air Lines saw its cancellations rise to 688 in May from 166 last year. But a spokesman said the big jump was attributable to Delta’s recent acquisition of Northwest Airlines. He said weather was a factor, too.
The Air Transport Association, which represents the airlines, wouldn’t comment on the number of cancellations without a breakdown about the specific causes.
“If we have no cancellations driven by the new rule, we would be happy, but we do not believe that will be the case,” said ATA spokesman Dave Castelveter.
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