Delta’s Northeast storm problem should have ended when New York’s airports recovered—but Delta’s didn’t. While United and JetBlue stabilized, Delta kept cancelling because it still couldn’t staff flights, with internal coding on at least one cancellation pointing to “crew uncovered” during “normal ops.”
Once the weather clears, cancellations stop being about snow and start being about whether an airline can put crews in the right place fast enough.
The storm hit the Northeast Friday evening and Saturday, and thousands of flights were delayed. New York-area airports were affected, and that’s a problem for Delta, JetBlue and United with significant operations there. JetBlue and United recovered. Delta did not, and the chaos for them continues.
Delta led the world in flight cancellations with 240 on Saturday. New York JFK saw a total of 20% of its flights cancelled. LaGuardia was hit with 21% cancellations. And Newark had 12% of flights cancelled. All three airports saw just over half of its flights delayed. However, everyone but Delta recovered.
- United, with its hub in New York, hasn’t cancelled a single flight yet today. Their Newark operation is usually more constrained than JFK.
- New York JFK-based JetBlue has cancelled just 2% of its flights systemwide.
- New York airports are no longer in the top 15 world airports for cancels. Yet two of the top 5 are Delta hubs, Atlanta and Minneapolis. (Minneapolis is dealing with weather.)
As of this writing, Newark still has an air traffic control program in place due to snow and ice. New York JFK does not. Delta is suffering from lack of crew to work flights. When flights delay, crew time out (exceeding their maximum allowable duty hours). When they cancel, crew are out of position (in the wrong city to work the next flight, even if an aircraft is available).
And at the end of a month, things are worse, because an airline can run out of available crew on reserve. They used some of those up earlier in the month. Offering premium pay can help rustle volunteers, but it’s tough over the peak holidays to get people to work.
Aviation watchdog JonNYC shares the coding from one cancelled flight,
“You have no clue how F’d Delta's pilot coverage system is… Dispatch started writing in the cancellation remarks…’FLT CXL- Flight Operations-Crew uncovered- Normal Ops’
Dispatchers are just as pissed as the pilots are”— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) December 28, 2025
Let’s take a closer look at ’FLT CXL- Flight Operations-Crew uncovered- Normal Ops’
- Flight was cancelled.
- The cancellation is being attributed to is an operational issue – lack of crew – not to maintenance, weather, air traffic control, etc. They didn’t have the crew available to operate the flight.
- But what’s key here is ‘Normal Ops’. This isn’t being handled under an ‘irregular operations’ event context like a major weather day. We’re past that. They’re labeling the flight as crew coverage failure on an otherwise normal day.
Delta is acknowledging, “nothing external is blowing up the network right now, and we still can’t cover the flight.” Even if dispatch didn’t type “normal operations” as editorial snark (it looks like a standard structured suffix), it still lands as a jab.
A crew shortage cancellation is generally considered within-carrier-control. Dispatchers (and pilots) are mad because the internal systems are effectively memorializing that the airline is canceling flights for crew coverage reasons without an external disruption to blame. This is all Delta’s fault.
Former Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson recently named Gil West as one of the architects of the carrier’s strategy that put them in the premium place they are today. West was Delta’s operations chief. He took old planes and built unmatched reliability. They already knew everything that would go wrong with those aircraft, and they did the reliability work overnight at outstations rather than waiting for planes to return to hubs.
A lot of Delta’s reliability issues – they’re still at times at the top of the industry, but not like they were before the pandemic – are occasionally tied to losing West during the pandemic. He’s now the CEO of Hertz (and Hertz has gotten hold of tracking their fleet, so they no longer seem to send their customers to jail for ‘stealing’ cars that they’ve properly rented).
Ultimately, Delta lost a lot of organizational knowledge and capability when they shed 31% of employees during the pandemic. And while they’ve recovered from their poor operational performance of 2022, they no longer dominate the way they once did. So continued operational issues are not surprising.
AI might eventually be able to work out all kinds of crew combinations. That paired with union commitments for flexibility might be good for maximum use of the crew during problems and figuring out deadheading.
True, humans can figure it out but it takes too much manpower to do all the calculations and permutations.
Tim Dunn in 3,2,1….
All the majors should seriously consider setting up a stand by contract with a few corporate jet operators to fly crew to and from major bases to staff aircraft after this sort of disruption.
Most mid sized corporate jets can carry a full crew in anywhere to anywhere in the US within hours, and quickly backfill this sort of situation.
Flight ops is stuck thinking inside the box and only of their aircraft as a way to pre or post position crews.
Derek, I suspect you’re right, but only if airlines use a portion of the extra freed-up capacity as additional reserve for irregulart operations. Airlines use such a great proportion of their total flight capacity for regular ops that any irregular event that’s outside the usual range leads to a prolonged recovery. Holding back a little more will require foregoing a bit of extra profit. Are they capable of that sort of self discipline?
First, feel free to tell us how many of these “Flight Ops uncovered” flights there actually were yesterday and today. Just because you or anyone else finds one does not at all mean that is the primary reason for delays and cancellations
Second, UA cancelled a far higher percentage of flights at EWR than DL’s regional carriers did at LGA or JFK and yet those are the passengers of their respective marketing carrier. You can’t rob Peter to pay Paul in real life.
Third, B6 cancelled 17% of its operations – so are they even more short staffed than DL – or is it possible – or actually reality that field conditions at JFK and EWR are not the same.
And, no MSP is not just dealing w/ weather. It has 4 hour average delays due to ice and snow and the vast majority of DL’s delays and cancellations involve MSP.
DL might very well not have enough pilots to cover their operation in IROPS but Gary has never proved that he is capable of unbiased analysis and stories like this prove the point.
Gary and his little stepson cannot deny that DL is still far ahead of the big 4 in on-time so far this year.
There is technology available today that can guide most any operation when it’s had a disruption…if you want to make the investment. Issue is whether or not company sees an ROI on the investment. Fewer inconvenienced passengers is not enough. Has to either save or make money. My hypothesis would be that tech doesn’t do enough if either yet.
This happened to us. I thought we were safe with first flight of the day. NY to LAS. Sat on runway for de-icing, then returned to gate for “new crew”, but when we hit the gate, cancelled the flight. Delta rebooked us on Flight via Austin, with an impossible 36 min connection. Cancelled that. Spent the entire night in Centurion Lounge, they were great and called the delay a “layover” so we had more time in lounge. Chase and Capital One refused us because of 3hr rule. Finally took off 7pm for a 7am original flight. “Weather delay” so no travel protections. Delta should have compensated people for this.
George Navarini says:
December 28, 2025 at 3:52 pm
All the majors should seriously consider setting up a stand by contract with a few corporate jet operators to fly crew to and from major bases to staff aircraft after this sort of disruption.
United does that on occasion.