As students returned to campus after spring break, many found that their flights were delayed or canceled.
The disruptions left students across the country stuck at airports for hours or even days — causing many students to miss lectures, club events and midterm exams.
In a non-scientific poll posted on The Miami Hurricane’s Instagram story, 87.5% of 16 responders said they experienced issues while traveling for spring break. Most respondents indicated the problems occurred while returning to Miami.
While delays can be common while flying, students were stuck at the airport for unusually long wait times. One anonymous survey responder said they had “17 [to] 18 hour delays.”
Freshman Agus Villalba was one of the students who had these delays. 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.”
Villalba was not alone in her experience. Third-year Senior Elle Mannion told The Miami Hurricane about her delays out of Salt Lake City, Utah.
After Mannion’s original flight on March 15 got canceled due to the fact that “the crew [was] fatigued,” the airline covered for her hotel and offered $12 food vouchers, as Mannion had to wait until the next night. Unfortunately, more issues arose for her.
“When we checked our airline app, the flight had been canceled again, and no cause for the cancellation was clearly displayed. So not once, but twice, the exact same flight got canceled,” she said.
A majority of the problems were caused by the extreme weather throughout the U.S. The scattered storms in Florida and the massive snowstorm sweeping across the Midwest and East Coast caused over 4,763 cancellations nationally on Monday alone.
According to the Instagram survey, 64% of the students affected by flight issues indicated 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, which started in February of this year, resulted in airport workers not receiving payments, 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.
The partial shutdown also led to excess planes in air traffic. Two of the poll responders said this resulted in “air traffic control limiting the planes allowed to come into Miami” when asked about the reason for their delays.
The mixture of weather, the government shutdown and large number of spring break travelers resulted in the issues that Villalba, Mannion and others faced.
These flight cancellations severely disrupted the plans of students on campus. Both Mannion and Villalba missed important events.
“In total, we were stuck in Salt Lake for about 36 hours. I missed 5 different classes and 2 shifts at my on-campus job,” Mannion said.
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,“flexible and nice,” and her math professor allowed her to reschedule the midterm. Now, students who were delayed coming back from break have to catch up on everything they missed.