For the second week in a row, millions of Americans will have to deal with a major winter storm and massive travel woes at airports.
Airlines preemptively cut hundreds of flights Saturday after the National Weather Service predicted a heavy snow event called Winter Storm Gianna would affect much of the East Coast.
As of 5:15 p.m. ET on Friday, nearly 1,000 flights scheduled for Saturday had been canceled, according to FlightAware. Dozens of extra flights for Sunday have been cancelled.
As of early Friday evening, Delta Air Lines was the first to shut down more than 415 flights on its mainline operations. Southwest Airlines cut more than 110 flights Saturday.
The disruption is expected to have a significant impact on Delta’s large hub at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL), where at least 30% of departing flights have been canceled on Saturday.
Other airports experiencing significant weekend flight cancellations include Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) in North Carolina and Baltimore/Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport (BWI).
There may be more cancellations.
CLT, the second busiest hub airport in the United States, is in the path of the winter storm. FlightAware showed dozens of flight cancellations on Saturday across its regional network operated by American Eagle jets.
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This latest winter blast comes at a bad time for American Airlines: The airline has just resumed operations after last weekend’s massive storm caused major disruptions at more than half of its hubs and caused several days of operational troubles while other airlines had returned to normal.
The airline said late Thursday it was “closely monitoring” the latest storm.
Airlines were quick to issue travel warnings for this weekend’s storm. These exemptions should allow passengers to easily change their tickets, even if they are booking a restricted basic economy ticket.
Travelers planning to travel in the next few days should pay close attention to weather forecasts at their departure, transfer and destination airports and consider changing their itinerary.
Keep in mind that as the winter storm is as severe as forecasters simulate it, flight disruptions could affect large swaths of the country because airline networks are interconnected.
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