Chris Bianchi, who works for 9NEWS as a meteorologist, was stranded at an airport on the evening of June 26, 2024. The reason? He broke a rule that no traveler should ever break.
He booked a flight on a summer evening.
Let’s Back Up A Little
Chris Bianchi decided to take a risky attempt and booked a flight from NYC to Denver, Colorado.
Unfortunately, the plane was delayed for hours. What was the reason? A thunderstorm delayed his flight.
Bianchi was stranded at LaGuardia Airport the whole night. And he couldn’t get on a plane to Denver until 7 p.m. the next day.
The meteorologist then advised all travelers in a TikTok video to be smart about scheduling their flights to avoid such a scenario.
The reason behind the hours-long delay in flight was that the summer thunderstorms affected flight times dramatically.
The viral TikTok video, which has collected over 3,000 comments and over 7,600 likes, had an excellent piece of advice for travelers in the US.
There is one rule that no flyer should ever break: booking a flight in the afternoon or night, especially in summer.
Soon, other weather experts joined the chorus and advised against booking flights on summer nights. These flights are most prone to being affected by inclement weather.
One former flight attendant confessed to telling people to take the first flight of the day because the weather mechanicals and flight delays get worse in the afternoon.
Another ex-flight attendant agreed with the notion, revealing it to be 100% true because whenever their schedule involved a late flight, they knew things were about to get worse.
Chris Bianchi lamented that he had to blame himself for the oversight. The footage, which has reached more than 266,000 viewers, was shot at the airport, where Bianchi was waiting for a delayed flight.
The meteorologist also said that the chances of a thunderstorm developing anywhere in the US are high in the afternoon and evening. This is especially true for summertime months – May, June, July, August, and September.
But Why Are Only Summer Afternoon and Evening Flights Affected By The Bad Weather?
According to National Geographic, the warm and humid summer temperatures are a breeding ground for the “perfect storm.”
These weather conditions could build cumulonimbus clouds that harbor lightning and thunder.
This is why storms strike so often in summer.
As per ScienceAlert reports, there is a higher chance of a thunderstorm developing in the evening than in the morning because the energy takes time to develop into a storm.
But what if the storm doesn’t occur near your arrival or departure destination?
Bianchi also explained in his video that your flight might be delayed even if you are flying from NYC to Miami and a thunderstorm develops in or near Chicago. Why? Because the flight you are waiting for might be coming all the way from Chicago.
Flights clogging up create a backlog, which results in nightmarish delays.
What Do You Do If You End Up Booking A Summer Evening Flight Which Gets Delayed?
Bianchi advised all the flyers in the US to use two apps that will help them efficiently track inbound flights.
The apps FlightAware and Flightradar24 offer advanced and accurate flight traffic data, which you can use to determine aviation trends and avert a weather-induced delay.
The meteorologist continued by suggesting that flyers should also book a refundable backup flight. This is to ensure that you can travel on the second flight if the first one doesn’t go off due to storm clouds accumulating on the horizon at or near the flight destination of the point of departure.
