A total of 11,016 flights have been canceled in the United States as of 4 p.m. ET Sunday, according to FlightAware data. According to Bloomberg, this is the highest number of cancellations since the pandemic.
The winter storm began on Friday and has slowly moved eastward. 4,104 flights were canceled on Saturday, up from only 690 on Friday. The storm is expected to continue over parts of the Northeast till Monday. There are already 2,465 cancellations and counting nationwide scheduled for tomorrow, the majority of which will be at Boston Logan International Airport and three major airports in the broader New York City area.
Even after the blizzard ends on Monday, cold temperatures and icy conditions will persist throughout the week.
“Frankly, it will be colder than any sustained period New York has experienced in nearly eight years,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a briefing Saturday.
Many airports across the country are completely closed and experiencing ground delays, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The storm caused the closure of some regional and international airports in Mississippi, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Tennessee, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Texas, South Carolina and Virginia, including New York City’s LaGuardia Airport. There are ground delays at both Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and Dallas Fort Worth Airport in Texas, with delays of more than two hours.
According to the FAA, ground stops are also possible at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
More than 10% of the cancellations were flights in and out of Atlanta’s busy hub airport, Hartsfield-Jackson International, where airport facilities like the Sky Train are also in limited operation. Georgia was hard hit by the storm as nearly 80,000 homes lost power across the state.
The other about 10% of affected flights were at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina. The Charlotte Area Transit System also had to suspend all transit services in the area until 10 a.m. Monday. New Jersey also had to issue a similar transit suspension.
Some other major airports affected by flight cancellations included Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport.
The winter storm appears to have impacted American Airlines the most as 50% of their scheduled flights were cancelled, and 17% were delayed. Delta Air Lines was second with 1,449 cancellations and 451 delays.
<a href