Mega winter storm brings severe travel meltdown to airports in Bay Area
Over 65% of Southwest flights canceled in Oakland and San Jose in past week
When Magali Hernandez boarded a flight in Portland on Dec. 25, she was supposed to end up at Disney World soaking up the rays in sunny Orlando on her family's longawaited vacation. Instead, Hernandez, along with her two young children and husband, spent Christmas stuck in San Francisco at an airport hotel without a change of clothes.
“We arrived in San Francisco and they told us our flight to Orlando was canceled,” she said while holding back tears.
On Monday morning, it was still unclear if her family would be reimbursed for its multi-thousand-dollar vacation package and Hernandez was already exhausted from spending about 12 hours on hold through a flurry of cancellations and delays with Alaska Airlines.
“We're stranded here,” she said.
The Hernandez family's multi-day odyssey is part of one the worst holiday travel seasons in recent memory. With more than 17,000 flights canceled since Dec. 21 and tens of thousands more delays, the massive winter storm that swept through swaths of the country over Christmas weekend upended celebrations from coast to coast.
Even as the bad weather abates, air travel is still feeling impacts of the storm. In the Bay Area, Oakland International Airport and San Jose Mineta International saw a virtual travel meltdown on Monday with over 65% of Southwest Airlines flights canceled as the airports turned into a maze of lines and strewnabout luggage. SFO, which isn't a Southwest hub, saw far fewer delays.
“With consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting our customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable,” Southwest said in a statement. “And our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning.”
Kathleen Bangs, an air travel expert at Flightaware, said the storm's devastating impact caught the industry off-guard after a smooth Thanksgiving travel weekend.
“I don't think anyone saw just how bad it was actually going to get,” Bangs said.
Her advice for travelers stranded across the country: “You have to look at the country like a chessboard.”
Bangs said travelers need to consider flights to airports that are within driving distance of their destination. Or book a flight with a less risky connection — stopping in Phoenix versus Salt Lake City for example — to avoid delays, she said.