EXPLAINER: Why was holiday-season flying such a nightmare?

By DAVID KOENIG
AP Airlines Writer

A forecast of better weather means that the worst may finally be over for tens of thousands of air travelers who were grounded by flight cancellations that skyrocketed over the New Year’s Day weekend. January and February are usually slow months for travel, and that figures to be even more obvious this year because many business travelers still haven’t returned. Lighter crowds should buy airlines time to prepare for the next big onslaught, around spring break. And they have been hiring. That, however, won’t help the hundreds of thousands of flyers whose Christmas and New Year’s plans were scrambled by airline staffing shortages and wintry weather.