A few days before his flight home to Seattle from Tokyo in October, Bruce Ryan learned that a windstorm might disrupt air travel in the Pacific Northwest.

So he went with some trepidation to the Alaska Airlines website to find the cost of changing his tickets.

He was pleasantly surprised to find that Alaska Airlines had issued a “weather waiver” in advance of the possible storm. It allowed passengers flying in or out of the affected area to make no-cost changes to their itineraries on their own, without speaking to a representative.

Many other airlines are now doing likewise, recognizing that they can make life easier for themselves and their passengers by anticipating weather delays and putting travel changes in the hands of their customers (and their customers’ smartphones) before the situation escalates into an act-of-God crisis.

Weather waivers generally give several options to ticket holders planning to use affected airports. Passengers can cancel their trips and obtain refunds. Or they can move their travel up or back a few days, or reroute via a different connecting city.

It’s up to the passenger to do the research on the company’s website or phone app to determine the most convenient, time, routing or departure/arrival city. Otherwise, the airline systems will automatically book the passenger on the next available flight on the original route.

Airlines are not obliged to compensate travelers with lodging or meals for delays because of extreme weather.

While the new approaches to weather disruptions can make travel easier for passengers, the airlines are not doing it just to keep customers happy. They have a financial incentive.

“If customers make the changes, the airline doesn’t have to pay its employees to spend time finding them alternative routes,” said Brian Kelly, a travel expert who runs The Points Guy blog.

What’s more, economy fliers — like retirees who change their weather-affected tickets to shift their trip to the following week — open up valuable inventory that can be sold at premium prices to those who must fly no matter what.