For the second straight week, millions of Americans will have to contend with a major winter storm — and mass travel woes at airports.
Airlines preemptively slashed hundreds of flights for Saturday after the National Weather Service predicted a significant snow event, named Winter Storm Gianna, would affect a large portion of the East Coast.
By 5:15 p.m. EST Friday, nearly 1,000 flights planned for Saturday had been canceled, according to data from FlightAware. Dozens of additional flights for Sunday had already been scrapped.
Delta Air Lines led the way with over 415 shuttered flights across its mainline operation, by early Friday evening. Southwest Airlines slashed more than 110 flights for Saturday.
The disruptions are expected to have a major impact at Delta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) megahub, where at least 30% of all departures for Saturday had been scrapped.
Other airports already seeing cancellations in droves for the weekend include Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) in North Carolina and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI).
Many more cancellations are likely.
American’s second-busiest hub, CLT, is on track to be squarely in the path of the winter storm. FlightAware showed dozens of Saturday cancellations across its regional network — operated by American Eagle jets.
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For American, this latest winter blast is poorly timed: the carrier just got operations back on track after last weekend’s significant storm caused major disruptions at more than half of its hubs and led to days of operational trouble, well after other airlines had recovered.
The carrier on Thursday evening said it was “closely monitoring” this latest storm.
Airlines quickly issued travel advisories for this weekend’s storm. These waivers should allow passengers to easily make ticket changes, even when booked on a restrictive basic economy ticket.
Travelers with trips planned for the next couple of days should keep a close eye on the forecast at their departure, connecting and destination airports — and consider making itinerary changes.
Keep in mind that with a winter storm as significant as what forecasters have modeled, it’s likely that flight disruptions could affect a large swath of the country since airlines’ networks are interconnected.
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