Airlines have already grounded nearly 1,200 flights for Thursday as a nightmare stretch of air travel pushed into a second week.
That’s on top of the more than 1,350 flights that were canceled nationwide on Wednesday, as of 1:30 p.m. ET, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. Another 2,000 flights had been delayed Wednesday.
More broadly, more than 17,000 flights have been canceled and a whopping 52,600 delayed since the latest string of successive storms began to disrupt air travel last Saturday (Feb. 21).
This week will offer little relief as the latest storm was expected to snarl flights into Friday morning. Already for Thursday, about 1,200 flights had been preemptively grounded. That figure was likely to keep growing as a half-foot of snow or more was forecast from the Ohio Valley into the mid-Atlantic, where flights could be snarled at busy airports in Philadelphia, Washington and — possibly — the New York City area.
As with previous storms, airlines waived change fees for customers ticketed to fly into airports experiencing poor weather. The policies varied by airline, though they generally allowed customers to make one change without paying the customary change fee.
Click here to read more.
SOURCE: USA Today, Ben Mutzabaugh
BCNN1 WP 