Many may have seen TV footage of woebegone travellers unable to go to their households in the course of the holidays due to a cyclone-induced meltdown at Southwest Airlines, America’s largest home provider. Very few, nevertheless, know concerning the journey hell simply south of the border at Tijuana airport, attributable to fog-induced mayhem at Volaris, a low-cost provider that’s Mexico’s largest airline. Your columnist does. He and Mrs Schumpeter spent a lot of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day stranded there together with hundreds of different travellers, attempting to rebook cancelled flights to locations throughout Mexico. For more often than not, resignation not rage prevailed. But yuletide cheer did fade when, after standing in line for 11 hours to rebook tickets, folks have been informed by a Volaris consultant they have been within the mistaken queue. At precisely the identical second, the corporate despatched out a seasonal tweet: “The magic of Christmas extends to the whole Volaris family.”
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The two incidents share many similarities. Both have been weather-related. They turned important on the identical day, December twenty third, and dragged on via a lot of the vacations. Their results have been traumatic. According to FlightAware, which tracks airline exercise, at its peak Southwest cancelled nearly three-quarters of its flights. The thick fog in Tijuana pressured Volaris to cancel 45% of flights throughout its community, hitting its core market—Mexican migrants returning residence from America. Both airways have been caught out worse than full-service rivals. United Airlines, for instance, cancelled far fewer flights than Southwest, although each have large presences in Denver and Chicago, the place the scenario was notably acute. Unlike Volaris, Aeromexico, a legacy Mexican provider, instantly resumed flights from Tijuana when the fog lifted.
So what can…
2023-01-05 09:20:04 How to keep away from flight chaos
Post from www.economist.com