The Spring Storms that swept through the West Coast, Midwest, Southeast, and Northeast Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were leading to a fourth day of cancellations on Saturday, after already causing more than 26,000 cancelled and delayed flights and a trail of damage and power outages from coast to coast.
Airlines cancelled more than a hundred flights Saturday as they struggled to reposition crews and aircraft so the carriers could resume their regular operations.
The storms snarled Spring Break plans; districts from Atlanta; to Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; and Grand Rapids, MI, are currently out on spring recess.
Schools whose Spring Breaks started Friday include those in Seattle; Salt Lake City; the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore area; New York City; Las Vegas; Miami; Sacramento; and Philadelphia.
Spring Storms Cause Cancellations, Delays
As of 11:30pm Friday, airlines had cancelled 1,245 flights within, to, or from the United States, according to FlightAware; 7,079 flights were delayed.
More than 100 flights were already cancelled for Saturday.
On Thursday, carriers cancelled 2,561 flights; 9,404 more were delayed.
Since Wednesday, when airlines scrapped 1,301 flights with an additional 4,483 delayed, more than 26,000 U.S. flights have either been late or never took off—a staggering snapshot of American airspace over just a three-day period.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) was again among the hardest hit airports, leading the way Friday in the number of cancelled and delayed flights.
Among major airports Thursday, the most impacted by a percentage of flights cancelled was Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL), where 31% of all flights were scrapped; 27% of flights at New York’s LaGuardia Airport (LGA) had to be cancelled.
New York’s JFK airport saw the nation’s worst percentage of flights delayed; half of its scheduled service—50%—was late Thursday. Baltimore’s BWI airport came in a close second at 49% of flights delayed.
In a sign of how broadly the spring storms impacted the nation’s air travel, San Francisco’s International Airport (SFO) on the West Coast was also hit hard, with 47% of its flights delayed—even more than Atlanta’s 40%.
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