Friday has turned out to be an awful day to fly
Friday has turned out to be an awful day to fly:- Thunderstorms snarled flights for the third day in a row, leaving schedules in a mess at multiple airports across the eastern United States.
Nationwide, nearly 1,200 flights had been canceled and another 6,150 delayed as of 6 p.m. ET on Friday, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. Several major airports saw significant disruptions Friday, including Chicago O’Hare, Baltimore-Washington and the three big airports serving New York City (LaGuardia, JFK and Newark Liberty). Adding to Friday’s woes were delays from rare thunderstorms near Las Vegas and back-ups in Seattle resulting from smoke from wildfires.
Friday’s problems follow thousands of storm-related cancellations and delays on Wednesday and Thursday, which hit airports in the Midwest and East Coast especially hard.
Since the storm pattern first set up on Wednesday, nearly 3,600 flights have been canceled in the U.S. and another 21,800 delayed, according to data from FlightAware. Many of those stemmed from storm-related delays in the East and Midwest.
Friday’s problems were severe enough that four big U.S. airlines – Delta, United, Southwest and JetBlue – issued flexible rebooking policies for fliers scheduled to fly through certain airports in the region.
Fliers face problems through much of the nation on Friday. In the East, strong storms flared up across an area extending from the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes into the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. In the West, storms in normally arid Las Vegas were slowing flights by about an hour, according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s flight delay map. At Seattle’s bustling airport, average delays were nearing an hour because of “poor visibility,” the result of smoke from wildfires in the region.
It was the third consecutive day of widespread problems for U.S. air travel.
On Thursday, nearly half of all the day’s flights at Chicago O’Hare were either delayed or canceled as areas of storms exploded over the area on Thursday evening. Chicago’s Midway Airport also was hard hit. NBC Chicago says “hundreds were left stranded following evening storms” there, with many spending the night in the airport. At New York LaGuardia and Newark Liberty, about 40% of the day’s flights were late or canceled altogether, according to FlightAware.
It was a similar story on Wednesday, when more than 40% of flights were delayed or canceled at both LaGuardia and Newark. Numerous other major airports also suffered significant disruptions as storms moved across the region.
But there was some good news for fliers. Calmer weather was expected across much of the nation starting Saturday.
Source:-Â https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2017/08/04/fliers-beware-friday-storms-could-snarl-flight-schedules-again/539425001/
