Holiday air travel mostly smooth despite storms

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The newly downsized U.S. airline industry navigated the hectic Thanksgiving travel season mostly without incident, although foul weather on Sunday and Monday complicated the return trips for some holiday travelers.

Storms in Chicago and other hub cities caused some cancellations and delays. In general, however, airlines passed their first major test since slashing fourth-quarter capacity.

"It looks like all in all it went pretty well," said Terry Trippler at TripplerTravel.com.

He said a 10 percent decline in the number of seats for sale from a year ago prevented major snafus that see travelers stuck at airports, unable to find another flight or a hotel room.

"I think that naturally things would work out much better," Trippler said.

Weather created travel hazards in a few spots across the country on Sunday. On Monday, snow in the Midwest created some disruptions.

AMR Corp's American Airlines, which has a hub in Chicago, reported three weather cancellations on Sunday, while just fewer than 50 percent of its flights were delayed by more than 15 minutes.

AMR spokesman Tim Wagner said planes were near full with load factors of greater than 90 percent on many flights. He did not have a total number of delays and cancellations for Monday.

"Everybody got to Thanksgiving and got there on time, and everybody is getting home from Thanksgiving," Wagner said. "But they may be delayed a little bit by weather."

UAL Corp's United Airlines reported smooth operations in the first few days of the Thanksgiving travel period, which began last week. But bad weather in Denver, Chicago and New York forced about 20 flight cancellations on Sunday. Snow continued to fall in Chicago on Monday, but UAL said it intended to fly its full schedule.

"For the majority of the weekend, our performance was pretty good," UAL spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said. "But Sunday and Monday posed a challenge because of weather at our larger hubs."

The airline industry made deep cuts in capacity after soaring fuel costs in the first half of 2008 threatened to undo the financial progress airlines made during years of painful restructuring.

American has said it would trim domestic capacity up to 12 percent in the fourth quarter. United said it would cut fourth-quarter mainline capacity by up to 16.5 percent.

Fuel prices have fallen some 65 percent since hitting their peak this summer, but carriers persisted with the cuts to improve efficiency and bolster fares.

The downsizing also led to smaller crowds and shorter lines at U.S. airports, which greatly reduces the chances of large-scale snafus that leave passengers stranded in airports or on grounded planes, Trippler said.

"I truly think the system was at the breaking point about a year ago," he said. "Now the system is right-sized."

(Reporting by Kyle Peterson, editing by Matthew Lewis)