US airlines cancelled thousands of flights ahead of Tuesday's blizzard in the northeastern US, but the weaker-than-forecast storm left some passengers complaining the preemptive strategy was too drastic. US airlines canceled nearly 6,500 Tuesday flights, according to tracking service FlightAware.com, a move aimed at avoiding costly delays and passenger inconvenience. "I do believe in some cities this was overly dramatic," Patrick Pryor, a 24-year-old whose flight to Chicago from his home in St. Louis was delayed due to fallout from the storm. "I can 100 percent tell you there was nothing going on in STL for us to sit on the tarmac for over one hour." Major US carriers scrapped all or most of their flights at the three New York-area airports, LaGuardia Airport, John F. Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International, in preparation for the storm. The cancellations were prompted by National Weather Service forecasts on Monday of up to 2 feet (60 cm) of snow in some parts of the Northeast. It scaled back those predictions on Tuesday for places such as New York City, which was due to get between 4 and 8 inches (10 and 20 cm). Scrapping flights hours ahead of a storm lets an airline re-allocate planes and crew earlier, meaning fewer flights and passengers canceled in total as a storm passes. Cancelling early also spares travelers unnecessary trips to the airport and gives them more options to rebook than when faced with a last-minute cancellation.<br/>
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US airlines are having trouble keeping flights on time this winter, and they are recording a sharp increase in long delays. The DoT said Tuesday that 42 flights in January were stuck on the ground so long that the airlines could face fines. That is the highest number of long ground delays in one month since February 2010, shortly before the rule allowing fines took effect. Only 76% of flights on leading airlines arrived on time in January, down sharply from 81.3% a year earlier. The government defines on time as arriving within 14 minutes of schedule. That followed a similar pattern in December, when delays were more common than a year earlier. Hawaiian, Delta and American had the best on-time ratings. Virgin America had the worst.<br/>
Low-cost airlines targeting inter-continental routes have come and gone since the days of UK entrepreneur Freddie Laker’s trans-Atlantic Skytrain service in the 1970s. But a new generation of discounters equipped with more-efficient jets and using the Internet to tap markets closed to their forerunners is set to endure, challenging the long-haul dominance of network carriers, IATA CEO Alexandre de Juniac said Tuesday. “There’s a general conviction in the industry that this phenomenon will keep on going and developing,” de Juniac said. “You see a lot of legacy companies which are preparing for competition with low-cost long-haul either by reducing fares or creating their own subsidiary.” This time round, airlines have “learned from past experience,” he said. Carriers such as Norwegian Air Shuttle are also benefiting from the fuel savings offered by aircraft including Boeing’s 787, together with an ability to sell flights in a far bigger marketplace via digital technology. Emirates said last week it was bracing for a “gathering storm” as low-cost airlines encroach on the inter-continental routes around which it has built a business model. Still, de Juniac said that the forecast increase in global air travel over coming decades should be sufficient to support the co-existence of both hub-based airlines and discounters plying point-to-point routes, adding that the latter may remain focused on connecting secondary cities.<br/>
The profitability of airlines based in the United Arab Emirates, the Middle East's main aviation hub, is likely to fall this year amid limited growth in demand, the head of IATA said Tuesday. The UAE is home to Emirates, which flies more passengers long haul than any other airline, as well as rapidly expanding Etihad Airways and low cost carriers flydubai and Air Arabia. "The UAE carriers will have a year that is probably below 2016," Alexandre de Juniac, CE of the IATA said. Low-cost carriers that offer long-haul services, as seen in Europe, could also soon start to take hold in the region, he said. IATA said in December that Middle East airlines are likely to see profits fall to $300m in 2017 from $900m last year in part due to high capacity and limited demand growth, but did not give specifics on UAE carriers at that time. Half-year profit fell 75% at Emirates and the airline's President Tim Clark said last week that while yield declines had halted it was still a tough year. Air Arabia and flydubai reported lower full-year profit for 2016, while Etihad has not yet reported its results but has said it is reviewing its business.<br/>
A woman suffered burns to her face and hands after her headphones caught fire during a flight to Australia, officials said Wednesday as they warned about the dangers of battery-operated devices on planes. The passenger was listening to music on her own battery-operated headphones as she dozed on the flight from Beijing to Melbourne on February 19 when there was a loud explosion. “As I went to turn around I felt burning on my face,” she told the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) which investigated the incident. “I just grabbed my face which caused the headphones to go around my neck. I continued to feel burning so I grabbed them off and threw them on the floor. “They were sparking and had small amounts of fire.” Flight attendants rushed to help and poured a bucket of water on the headphones, but the battery and its cover were both melted and stuck to the floor. Pictures show the woman, who was not named, with a blackened face and neck and blisters on her hands, with passengers having to endure the smell of melted plastic, burnt electronics and burnt hair for the remainder of the flight. The transport safety bureau, which did not identify the airline involved and the brand of headphones, assessed that the lithium-ion batteries in the device likely caught fire.<br/>
The latest French air traffic control (ATC) strike has caused a record-breaking 1,500 flight cancellations, according to estimates by commercial aviation group Airlines for Europe (A4E). The industry body said the March 6-10 walkout affected more than 1m passengers and led to more than 320,000 minutes—or 5,300 hours—of delays. A4E managing director Thomas Reynaert described the impact on passengers as “devastating” and once again called on European and French policymakers to minimize strike disruption, without affecting controllers’ fundamental right to strike. Potential solutions proposed by A4E include requiring a minimum notice period of 72 hours and allowing upper airspace flights to continue by removing geographical dependency. The walkout was one of the longest ATC strikes in Europe, affecting control centers in Brest, Bordeaux and Marseille. The action forced airlines to cut their French flights by 25% and disrupted services overflying France—including links from the UK and Italy, Switzerland and Spain—triggering congestion and lengthy detours. A4E called on passengers to sign its petition calling for strike disruption to be minimized, adding that ATC strikes have had a E12b impact on European Union GDP over the last seven years. “Travelers can unite and let out their frustration about the continuous travel disruptions supporting our petition ‘Keep Europe’s Skies open.’ We will present this petition in Brussels to urge the EU Commission and the EU Parliament to finally take action. Holidays and the summer break are ahead of us as possibly the next strikes,” Reynaert said.<br/>