Passengers at Kansas City International Airport saw a big increase in canceled flights in June  the second month after the federal government started cracking down on long tarmac delays.Statistics released Tuesday showed that 103 flights were canceled at KCI in June, up from 59 in June 2009. Cancellations also had risen in May, rising to 72 from 45 the year before.It is not clear what role, if any, the tarmac rule played in the cancellations at the start of the summer travel season. Airline officials said a variety of factors, including storms and air-traffic congestion, contributed.

The trend at KCI is similar to what has been going on nationally since the government imposed heavy fines on airlines that leave passengers stranded in planes on the runway for more than three hours.While cancellations were up nationally in May 2010, they flattened out in June, according to the data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.Nationwide, 8,279 flights were canceled in June, or about 1.5 percent of all flights. By comparison, there were 8,282 cancellations in June 2009, also about 1.5 percent.KCI officials noted that the local cancellations made up only a small percentage of the roughly 8,700 flights in and out of the airport every month.

Even with the increase, KCI’s cancellation rate was about 1.1 percent in June.Since the numbers are so low in the first place, the year-over-year increase is not major percentage-wise, KCI spokesman Joe McBride said.
The cancellation statistics are getting heightened attention since the government imposed the new rule that fines airlines $27,500 per passenger for a plane parking on the tarmac for more than three hours.Overall, three-hour tarmac delays have been tapering off.In June a year ago, there were 268 delays of more than three hours. But only three occurred last June  all United Airlines flights June 18 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

When the tarmac rule started, airlines predicted increased cancellations because the fines were so stiff that aircraft would return to the gate if there was a hint they would not meet the three-hour mandate.In the first month, cancellations did increase, but the federal government dismissed it, saying it was too early to tell if it stemmed from the new rule.Then in mid-July, a pair of airline consultants issued a study predicting that for every three-hour tarmac delay that the rule prevented, two flights would be canceled.Federal transportation officials denounced the study, saying it was misleading and a premature assessment of the impact of the new rule.

Southwest Airlines, which has the largest market share at KCI, had four cancellations in June. It had none at KCI in June 2009.Nineteen KCI cancellations were Delta flights. That airline reported no cancellations at KCI in 2009. A Delta spokesman attributed the cancellations to weather, crew staffing, heavy air traffic and air traffic-control issues.Commuter airline American Eagle reported 16 cancellations at KCI in June, compared with six in June 2009. A spokesman noted that the airline served only routes between Kansas City and its Chicago hub. He said Chicago air traffic was seriously affected by severe thunderstorms in June.If there were 16 total cancellations, that is just eight round trips in a month, said Tim Smith. That many flights could easily be canceled in just two or three days of bad weather at Chicago —and there was plenty of that weather to go around.