Weather Causes More Flight Disruptions in Northeast

Just when the airlines were getting over a three-week Omicron-induced nightmare of delays and cancellations, Mother Nature just said “Hold my beer.”

A winter storm of snow, sleet and freezing rain slammed the Northeast and Canada on Sunday night into today, bringing with it a fresh round of flight disruptions.

According to the flight tracking service FlightAware, 1,483 flights within, into or out of the United States have been canceled as of Noon today, Monday, January 17, and 1,089 flights have been delayed.

As the storm swept in from the Midwest and then made a dip into the South before heading north again, airlines canceled 3,060 flights the day before on Sunday and had 4,984 delays. While the temperatures did warm up to above freezing, giving the disruptions a brief respite, it nonetheless dropped up to 10 inches in parts of New York State and up to 16 inches in Ontario, Canada. The made the usual suspects involved jump to the top of the delayed/cancellation list for airports – Charlotte-Douglas, Atlanta-Hartsfield, Washington-Reagan and Dulles, New York-LaGuardia, Newark-Liberty, Toronto-Pearson and Montreal-Trudeau.

Every major airline servicing those airports, and more – including American, Delta, United, Spirit and JetBlue – all waived change fees for passengers affected by the disruptions.

Delays and cancellations that began on December 23, partly due to weather but mostly due to under-staffed airlines from employees calling in sick with the Omicron variant of COVID-19, showed signs of breaking this past week.

So far, FlightAware is reporting that there are no delays for tomorrow, Tuesday, January 18, and only 55 cancellations within, into or out of the U.S.