Airlines' changed winter storm cancellation practices

I mentioned two weeks ago that come April, news stories would pop up on the one-year anniversary of the federal government's tarmac-delay rule, the one that imposes heavy fines on airlines for stranding passengrs on airport tarmacs for three hours or more. I said that because winter stormis had caused so many cancellatioins already this winter, it was going to be hard to figure out after a year whether the new rule was causing even more flights to be scrubbed. That same point -- with lots of statistics about cancellations so far -- is at the heart of a New York Times story published yesterday. Customers in general seem to be much better off with airlines canceling more flights than ever with when storms threaten.