Flight Cancellations Hit Record High As Winter Storm Rages On

As Winter Storm Fern continues to bring icy temperatures and snow across North America from New Mexico to Maine, air travel is taking a record hit.

A total of 11,016 flights have been canceled in the United States as of 4 p.m. ET on Sunday according to FlightAware data. Per Bloomberg, that’s the highest number of cancellations since the pandemic.

The winter storm began on Friday and has gradually moved eastward. On Saturday, 4,104 flights were canceled, up from just 690 on Friday. The storm is expected to continue hitting parts of the Northeast through Monday. There are already 2,465 cancellations and counting scheduled across the nation for tomorrow, most of which will be at Boston Logan International Airport and the three major airports in the wider New York City region.

Even after the snow storm ends on Monday, the frigid temperatures and icy conditions will persist into the week.

“Frankly, it will be colder than any sustained period that New York has experienced in about eight years,” New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a briefing on Saturday.

There are several complete airport closures and ground delays in place across the country, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Some regional and international airports across Mississippi, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Tennessee, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Texas, South Carolina and Virginia were closed down due to the storm, 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 the delays reaching more than two hours.

Ground stops at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport are also possible, per the FAA.

More than 10% of the cancellations were flights going in and out of the busy hub airport of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International, where airport facilities like the sky train are also in limited operation. Georgia was hit hard by the storm as roughly 80,000 households are experiencing power outages across the state.

Another roughly 10% of impacted flights were at North Carolina’s Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The Charlotte Area Transit System also had to suspend all transit services in the area until 10 a.m. on Monday. New Jersey had to issue a similar transit suspension as well.

Some of the other major airports pummeled by flight cancellations were Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport.

The winter storm seems to have hit American Airlines the hardest as 50% of their scheduled flights got canceled, and 17% have been delayed. Delta Air Lines was a close second with 1449 cancellations and 451 delays.