Flight cancellations could top 10,000. Here's what to do if Irene cancels yours.

Flight cancellations are already under way in anticipation of hurricane Irene. Here's what to do if flight cancellations affect your travel plans. 

JetBlue is sending planes away from New York and Boston to California and Florida. In New York, American Airlines is bringing tarps and plywood into the terminal, “so if there are leaking roofs we can cover computers,” a spokesman for the airline says.

Already, flight cancellations are under way, with JetBlue taking the most drastic measures. It has canceled all flights in and out of JFK International, LaGuardia, Westchester County, Newark Liberty International, and Boston Logan International airports, scheduled on Sunday through Monday afternoon. That’s 891 canceled flights.

American Airlines has canceled some 150 flights scheduled out of the Washington, D.C., area, which includes Reagan National, Dulles International, and Baltimore Washington International airports, between noon Saturday and noon Sunday. Southwest Airlines has announced that it will suspend all its 14 flights out of Norfolk, Va., Saturday.

In all, 381 flights were canceled Friday, 1,380 for Saturday, and 3,975 for Sunday. The total could top 10,000, says Daniel Baker, chief executive officer of the flight-tracking website Flightaware.com. The airports most affected are Newark, JFK, LaGuardia, Charlotte Douglas International in North Carolina, and Philadelphia International.

Other airlines, though, are waiting to see if Irene’s path becomes more apparent before making massive cancellations. After all, it’s simpler for JetBlue, a relatively small airline with a heavy concentration of airports in the Northeast, to cancel ahead of time than it is for airlines with more planes and hubs to coordinate around the country, Mr. Baker says.

“It’s sort of a game between [them] to see who does it first,” he says. If one airline cancels a flight unnecessarily but another flies on, it could make the jittery airline look bad. If the hurricane shuts down every airport in its path for a day, that means 10,000 scheduled flights would not depart, Flightaware.com estimates. During the snowstorm in late January and early February this year, which affected a huge swath of the nation from Texas to Minnesota to New York, more than 20,000 flights were canceled in a week.

Northeastern airports are used to dealing with weather-related shutdowns. "It just caught everyone a little off-guard in the summertime," Baker says.

If your flight is canceled, here's what to do. Typically, the airlines allow customers to rebook a flight or get a refund if hurricane Irene wrecks travel plans. Though airlines’ policies vary, most of the major airlines are offering a fee waiver, or even a refund, for rescheduling a flight that could be affected, even if that flight hasn’t been canceled. American Airlines is letting customers who are scheduled to fly to certain destinations as late as next Tuesday rebook their tickets. But it is concerned about its ability to accommodate all the passengers on canceled flights.

"We’re still in the summer travel season, and airplanes are pretty full," says Ed Martelle, an American Airlines spokesman. "We take any decision to cancel a flight reluctantly, and we take it as late as practicable.”

“We don’t want to rush into anything," he adds.

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com