What Actually Cancels a Flight in a Typhoon (It Is Usually Not the Wind at Your Airport)
People assume flights are cancelled because the weather at the airport becomes too dangerous to fly in. That happens, but it is not the most common reason. Most typhoon cancellations are decided long before the weather arrives, and several of them have nothing to do with conditions at your airport at all. Knowing which mechanism is about to hit you changes what you should do, and when. Reason one: the aircraft is somewhere else This is the single most common cause and the least understood. An aircraft flies a chain of sectors through the day. If a storm disrupts the morning rotation two cities away, the aircraft that was supposed to operate your evening flight never arrives. Your airport can be perfectly calm and sunny and the flight still does not exist, because the metal is sitting on the wrong apron. Airlines also deliberately evacuate aircraft out of an airport before a storm arrives, flying them empty to a safe field. Those aircraft then need to be flown back, which takes ...