Air travelers are facing at least 48 hours of chaos as a massive winter storm moves over the East Coast.
The storm was forecast to bring blizzard conditions, snow and ice from Boston to the Carolinas, potentially snarling flights in Washington, New York, Charlotte and several other of the nation’s busiest airports.
Every big U.S. airline was waiving change fees for fliers ticketed to fly to airports in the storm’s path (see below for individual airline links)
Underscoring the headache for fliers, airlines preemptively canceled more than 3,000 flights before the first snowflakes had even fallen in the region. By Thursday even, U.S. carriers had collectively canceled 2,100 flights across the nation on Friday and another 1,300 on Saturday.
And those figures were only likely to worsen once the wintry weather started arriving, first in the Carolinas and by Friday evening in Washington, Philadelphia and New York.
The hardest-hit airports as of early Friday morning were in the Carolinas, where most flights had been grounded at Charlotte — one of the nation’s busiest airports — and at Raleigh-Durham.
Related: East Coast braces for epic blizzard
American, which operates its second-busiest hub at American, had suspended its entire Friday schedule at Charlotte.
The airline — the USA’s biggest — already said it would do the same at two of its other hubs on Saturday, grounding all flights at Philadelphia and Washington Reagan National airports. The carrier also had already grounded all flights at Washington Dulles and Baltimore/Washington (BWI) as well.
And American had plenty of company in preemptively canceling flights.
By late Thursday, Delta Air Lines — now the nation’s No. 2 carrier — had already thinned its Friday schedules for a number of airports in the Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic. The airline also had begun to cancel evening flights for the Washington and Baltimore airports.
United also began canceling flights to the Mid-Atlantic from late Friday afternoon, saying it would halt all service to some airports through Sunday. Most notably, United planned to halt all flights at its major hubs at Newark Liberty and Washington Dulles from late Friday afternoon through Sunday.
American had already grounded all of its commuter flights at the three big New York City airports for Saturday, with additional “mainline” cancellations likely if the storm hits New York as hard as expected.
Southwest — the nation’s biggest carrier of domestic passengers — preemptively axed hundreds of flights too. Its cancellations were spread across a number of airports, including BWI, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Boston, Greenville/Spartanburg, S.C., among others.
Travelers flying Friday and Saturday should brace for major disruptions in the Northeast. But problems could ripple elsewhere, even to cities under calm weather. A flight from Houston to Los Angeles, for example, could become delayed or canceled if the aircraft or crew scheduled to fly it gets bogged down in snowy Washington, D.C.
And if the flight disruptions are as broad as expected, it could take until early next week until airlines can resume completely normal schedules and clear backlogs of stranded fliers.
For now, passengers seeking to avoid the storm’s disruptions can take advantage of airlines' winter weather waivers. The policies vary by airline, but they generally allow customers to make one change to their itineraries — with some restrictions — at no additional cost.
Check links to individual airline policies:
- Alaska Airlines
- American Airlines
- Air Canada
- Delta Air Lines
- Frontier Airlines
- JetBlue
- Porter Airlines
- Southwest Airlines
- United Airlines
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