David J. Danto

Travel thoughts in my own, personal opinion

eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD on

Snow Job – February 2025

The answer is snow. The riddle is what do kids love and adults hate? For kids, snow means snowmen, sledding, and the magic of winter. For adults, snow means shoveling sidewalks, scraping windshields, delayed flights, and questionable road conditions. Somebody has to clear the car, somebody has to stock the store shelves, and somebody – usually you – has to navigate the mess that snow creates. And when it comes to travel? Snow turns an already fragile air travel system into a full-blown disaster.

Most airports in the U.S. shut down during major snowstorms, but even a little bit of bad weather can cause chaos. Here in the Northeast, if it so much as rains, incoming flights are spaced out twice as much, setting off a ripple effect of delays. When it snows? Forget it. Snow means runway clearing, plane de-icing, and an endless game of waiting.

But how airports handle snow depends entirely on where you are.

Heathrow vs. Canada – A Tale of Two Snowstorms

About 20 years ago, I was flying home from London Heathrow on a Saturday morning. We boarded, taxied toward the runway, and then – just as we were about to get to the runway – it started snowing. Hard. Within a minute or two the snow was heavy enough to reduce visibility to zero. The pilot was ordered to turn the plane around and head back to the gate. (And I learned, apparently, making a U-turn with a triple 7 heavy on a Heathrow taxiway is no easy feat in and of itself.)

By the time we got to the gate and deplaned, the snow had stopped. The entire storm lasted about twenty minutes. But that short burst of snow? It shut down Heathrow for four days. We sat in the airport all day waiting for someone to do something but no one did.

Us Americans onboard looked out the airport window in disbelief, telling airport staff, “You need to shovel that now, or it’s going to turn into ice.” The blank stares in response made it clear – they had no idea what we were talking about. And sure enough, it turned to ice, and Heathrow remained a mess for days.

Getting out of the airport to a hotel that evening was a nightmare that would take many pages to explain, as would the story of how I spent a lost December weekend in London. Suffice to say I was furious that evening that the first flight Continental could rebook me on didn’t leave till mid-Tuesday. (Ultimately, that turned out to actually be the next Continental flight that left London.)

Now contrast that with Canada. I’ve had 5 a.m. taxis to airports in cities like Calgary and Toronto during full-on snowstorms. I’ve asked cab drivers, “Am I in trouble? Will the airport be closed?”

Their answer is always the same – even if it is sometimes in French: “It always snows. Everything works perfectly fine in the snow.”

And they’re right. I have never missed a flight out of Canada due to snow.

The Airlines Are Their Own Worst Enemy

Part of the problem is that U.S. airlines schedule flights based on perfect conditions that never exist. If a single butterfly flaps its wings anywhere in the world, bingo – you’ve got delays. If a snowflake hits that flapping wing – look out, now you’re in massive trouble. You’d better like it where you are because you aren’t going anywhere.

The solution would be better regulations, more realistic scheduling, and proper equipment at every airport that might need it. But if you look at today’s political landscape, that issue is somewhere around priority #1,938 on the to-do list (and even the top of the list is looking pretty neglected by the idiots in charge now in any case. Don’t hold your breath waiting for any improvements in anything. We could have told you this was going to happen. Actually, we did.)

So, the next time it snows, try to channel your inner child and remember when it was fun instead of frustrating. And if you happen to have kids? Teach them early – shoveling is a skill they’ll be very useful for soon enough

This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions.

All image and links provided above as reference under prevailing fair use statutes.

Copyright 2025 David Danto

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