Winter Weather Leaves Travelers Stranded

Mar. 17, 2007 — -- A blast of winter weather has left more than just snow to clean up. Travelers across the Northeast are stranded this morning, as Friday's flight cancellations stretched into this morning.

Passengers may have trouble getting to their destinations even once the skies clear. Flights are so booked, there are few empty seats to put them in.

Jet Blue was quick to cancel nearly all its flights in and out of New York yesterday, careful not to strand thousands of passengers like the airline did last month, when it failed to scrap flights in advance of a winter storm.

"I think they're just covering themselves because they had such a bad problem and such bad media, that they're just trying to protect themselves," one stranded Jet Blue passenger told "GMA."

Some aviation analysts believe JetBlue's mess last month and the political furor it created have made airlines more aggressive in canceling flights.

"This is a whole new dynamic. And that whole new dynamic is we don't want Congress to get upset, so we'll just cancel the flight instead," said Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant.

But the big airlines insist that's not so, that canceling even thousands of flights before a big winter storm is business as usual.