Spring break ended this past weekend, and as students returned to campus, many found that their flights were delayed or cancelled.
The flight issues left students across the country stuck at the airport for hours or days. As a result, students missed lectures, club events, and midterm exams.
In a student body poll conducted by The Miami Hurricane, 87.5% of the responders said they experienced issues while traveling for spring break. The poll indicates that most of these issues occurred when returning to Miami.
While delays can be common while flying, students were stuck at the airport for unusually long times. One responder of the survey said they had “17 [to] 18 hour delays.”
Most of the students just experienced delays, but there were a small portion of people who experienced both cancellations and delays, leaving them at the airport for extended periods of time.
Freshman Agus Villalba told The Hurricane about her experience and how her flights out of South Carolina were rescheduled across multiple days.
“I had a lot of issues on my flight from Charleston to Miami,” she said. “I was supposed to return on Sunday night, but my flight suddenly got canceled and it was moved to Monday night, then that flight was canceled as well and it was moved to Tuesday morning at 6 a.m., then that one was canceled as well and moved to Tuesday night.”
A majority of the problems were caused by the extreme weather throughout the U.S. From scattered storms in Florida to the giant snowstorm sweeping across the Midwest and Eastcoast, the weather caused upwards of 4,763 cancellations nationally on Monday alone.
According to the poll, 64% of the students affected by flight issues responded that weather was the main contributor to their delays.
However, weather was not the only reason for a spike in cancellations and delays.
The partial government shutdown resulted in airport workers not receiving payment, including those at TSA; the shutdown coupled with higher volumes of travelers due to college students traveling for spring break caused busier airports with fewer workers, longer security lines, and numerous delays.
Students also noted that the partial shutdown not only caused less workers, but it also led to excess planes in air traffic, resulting in “air traffic control limiting the planes allowed to come into Miami.”
The mixture of weather, the government shutdown, and spring break travelers resulted in the substantial issues that Villalba and others faced.
Villalba arrived in Miami at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, meaning she was delayed in Charleston for a total of three days, missing two days of her classes.
Like a lot of students, Villalba was supposed to take a midterm when she got back to campus.
“I had to email all of my professors because obviously I was not able to attend class, and I was really nervous about it, especially since I had a Calculus midterm on Tuesday,” she explained.
Fortunately, her professors were understanding and “flexible and nice,” with her math professor allowing her to reschedule the midterm. Now, Villalba and other students who were delayed coming back from break have to catch up with everything they missed.