Latest Storm Blamed for 4,000+ Cancellations

The latest storm to slam the Northeast is being blamed for over 4,000 flight cancellations, reports USA Today‘s Ben Mutzabaugh. “Flight schedules were a mess for a second straight day in the Northeast,” Mutzabaugh writes, “with more than 4,400 cancellations now blamed on the fifth major winter storm to hit the region in as many weeks.” Cancellations impacted far-off airports as well, including some on the West Coast and Europe, where flights bound for the Northeast or dependent on aircraft coming from the region were scrapped.

Delays and cancellations have stretched well into today, as well. As of 4:10 p.m., FlightAware.com was reporting delays of four hours and 17 minutes at JFK, and delays of just over two hours at Newark and Philadelphia. Both JFK and Newark were shut down from around midnight last night until mid-morning today. Washington, D.C., and Boston were showing normal operations.

With nearly a half-dozen significant winter storms in the books, it’s safe to say January hasn’t been a good month for travelers. Over 15,000 flights have been canceled this month due to wintry weather, mostly into and out of the Northeast, but also at Southeast and Mid-Atlantic hubs such as Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Fortunately, we haven’t seen the prolonged rebooking hassles passengers encountered following the Christmas storm. Travelers should expect relatively normal operations by tomorrow, and certainly by the weekend.

Readers, were you supposed to fly during any of January’s major storms? If so, did you make it off the ground?