At NYC airports, a 'perfect storm' of air travel woes

The prolonged shutdown of LaGuardia Airport, combined with the ongoing TSA federal funding lapse and poor weather, made for a "perfect storm" of delays for airline travelers, travel experts said Monday.

The deadly collision involving an Air Canada plane and a Port Authority rescue vehicle resulted in a 15-hour closure of LaGuardia, which serves more than 30 million travelers each year.

By the time it reopened one of its two runways around 2 p.m., the airport had already racked up more than 600 flight cancellations, and more than 100 delays, according to FlightAware.com.

Isabella Koelling, 18, said she had just gotten out of her Uber at Terminal B when she received an email that her 12:30 p.m. Frontier flight to Orlando, Florida, had been canceled.

“We got here six hours early because TSA is so bad,” said Koelling, who was visiting New York with a friend. “Thought that that was going to be our primary concern. Turns out it’s not.”

Upon LaGuardia’s reopening, Port Authority officials advised travelers to "expect delays and/or cancellations" and to "plan ahead and check with your airline for the latest updates." It will take days before debris can be removed from the runway where the crash occurred due to the investigation, National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said at a news conference Monday night.

And the situation was far from ideal at other airports in the region, where waits for passenger security checks were already much longer than usual because of TSA personnel shortages caused by the ongoing lapse in federal funding. Around noon, the average wait time at the TSA PreCheck at Kennedy Airport was 140 minutes — up substantially from the usual 11 minutes, according to Qsensor, which tracks airport conditions.

"We have a little bit of a perfect storm of things happening," said Meghan Walch, director at InsureMyTrip, a travel insurance comparison site. "Any incident in a major hub like LaGuardia can definitely cause ripple effects across the entire air travel system. So even travelers who are not flying through New York may see delays or cancellations as aircraft and crews get out of position."

Kennedy Airport saw 198 flight delays and 10 cancellations by around 4 p.m. Monday.

Town of Islip spokeswoman Caroline Smith said there was "no impact" from the crash on service at Long Island MacArthur Airport, which had eight delays and no cancellations Monday, according to FlightAware.

Making matters worse, travel expert Rebecca Alesia said, is the fact that several private school students are traveling for spring break this week, and that some travelers bound for destinations in the Middle East, including those going to Israel for Passover, were already anxious over the ongoing military conflict in that region.

"Everyone’s nerves are already frayed when it comes to travel," said Alesia, founder of Wanderology, an Oyster Bay-based luxury travel firm. "Now to wake up to something like this, it’s just really weakening traveler confidence in the infrastructure."

Among the travelers affected by Monday's crash was Alesia's husband, Salvatore, who flew to Tampa, Florida, for the weekend to attend a college basketball game with his father, and was set to return to LaGuardia Monday morning.

Although his original flight was canceled, Alesia eventually boarded an afternoon flight tentatively scheduled to arrive at LaGuardia, but with "no guarantee" that it wouldn't be detoured, as the airport was still closed when he took off.

"They told us maybe half-way into the flight ... They received word that we'd be able to land [at LaGuardia]," Salvatore Alesia said.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.