‘We’re going to be Late, grandma’: Thanksgiving Flight delays set to Cost airlines dearly

Almost 80 million Americans will travel for the Thanksgiving holiday, but it’s unlikely to be smooth sailing, with Accuweather predicting that rain and snow will “complicate” transportation.

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The forecast is for heavy storms in the country’s midsection and the northeast, all of which could mean flight delays, which have become very costly to carriers, with the effects of delays worldwide expected to reach $60 billion this year.

Although a recent five-day disruption of Delta’s flight system was caused by computers and not by weather, it gives some sense of what delays can cost an airline. Delta management put the price of the problem at $500 million. Meanwhile, delays of all types are expected to rise throughout the next decade, many of them due to climate change.

Tardy travel
Thanksgiving is a particularly risky time for people who want to stay on schedule due to it often being the start of the winter in the northern tier of states. In this regard, snow and ice delays are expected to hit several cities this week and next; meanwhile, there are storm warnings from Seattle to central California and from North Carolina to Maine.

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