Sea-Tac Airport’s three runways and all its taxiways and terminals were once again open for business Friday, but the effects of two days of ice and snow lingered in the terminal and in airline schedules.
“We’re doing really well,” said Sea-Tac spokesman Perry Cooper on Friday afternoon. “The runways and taxiways are clear, and we’re ready to do business.”
But nearly all of Sea-Tac’s airlines, their schedules scrambled by two consecutive days of inclement weather, were struggling to return their repertoire of flights to normal.
According to FlightStats.com, airlines canceled 67 departures from Sea-Tac between 6 a.m. and 1 p.m. Friday.
Those canceled departures were headed to a broad range of destinations from San Diego to Santa Ana in California and from Chicago to Houston across the nation’s midsection.
The airport’s largest tenant, Alaska Airlines, dropped plans to fly 50 of its Sea-Tac departures Friday.
Ben Minicucci, Alaska’s executive vice president of operations, said it plans to have rebooked all passengers whose flights were canceled this week by Sunday.
The airline and its sister carrier, Horizon Air, canceled 52 flights Thursday.
The rapidly changing forecasts, he said, caught the airline flat-footed Thursday.
When airline planners met late Wednesday, he said, the forecast called for a drier and warmer Thursday. The airline planned a normal schedule.
“They called me about 4:30 a.m. and told me that freezing rain was falling and coating the airplanes, he said. Despite keeping mechanics overnight at nearby hotels and doubling the number of de-icing trucks available, the airline was overburdened by the task of de-icing planes.
De-icing, instead of taking 10 minutes, was requiring as long as an hour and a quarter and four times as much de-icing fluid, he said.
The airline concentrated its efforts on dispatching flights to Hawaii and the East Coast because if it canceled those, it would take days to find space for passengers whose flights were scrubbed.
Thursday’s problems bled into Friday, he said, as planes and crews finished the day Thursday out of position.
Alaska and its sister carrier, Horizon, weren’t the only airlines to cancel departures Friday. United, Continental, Frontier, Delta and Southwest also canceled flights.
Cooper said airlines have a little more flexibility in rebooking passengers because wintertime flights typically have more empty seats than those at other times of the year.
One airline, JetBlue, which had canceled three of its four daily flights earlier this week from Sea-Tac, added a departure in an effort to accommodate backlogged passengers, said Cooper.
Airport personnel had handed out 400 blankets to passengers sleeping in the airport overnight Thursday.
Many of those passengers were trapped at the airport when their late-night flights were canceled at the last minute, the airport spokesman said.
“We haven’t broken out the cots yet like we did in 2008 when we had day after day of bad weather,” said Cooper. “It looks like this may be clearing up.”
While Sea-Tac’s own weather problems were receding Friday, other airports were beginning to feel the storm’s lash.
At Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, some 300 afternoon flights were canceled Friday because of weather. At the Windy City’s Midway airport, Southwest Airlines canceled 70 departures.
John Gillie: 253-597-8663 john.gillie@thenewstribune.com
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