An historic “weather bomb” is making a mockery of airline schedules and ruining holiday plans for travelers across North America.
With snow starting to build in some cities and fierce winds bringing record-low temperatures to many parts of the U.S., FlightAware reports 4,700 U.S. flight cancellations as of 1 p.m. Eastern Time. The website showed 35% of all outbound flights have been cancelled at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, while Detroit had a 43% cancellation rate and Seattle 46%. Chicago O’Hare was showing 23% of flights cancelled.
Cleveland and Buffalo were much worse. Cleveland was showing a 70% cancellation rate, while Buffalo was at 66%. Weather forecasters said Buffalo, which was hit with a record snowfall just a few weeks ago, could get several feet more.
FlightAware says Southwest has been particularly hard hit, with 887 cancellations as of that time (22% of all flights). Alaska had cancelled 335 flights as of 1 p.m. ET, or 343% of all flights.
Things were much better for United (241 cancellations, or 9%)and Delta (245, or 8%). Still, more than 4,000 cancellations only a few hours into one of the busiest days of the year is a very bad sign. And the weather is expected to get much worse.
113 million Americans are supposed to travel over the holidays.
It’s much worse in Canada, where WestJet proactively cancelled all flights arriving and departing Vancouver International Airport (YVR) beginning at 11:50 p.m. PST Thursday, until the late afternoon of Friday, December 23, dependent on weather conditions. It also grounded flights at several other British Columbia airports, including Victoria International.
FlightAware reports 196 WestJet cancellations already today (56% of all flights), while WestJet Encore was at 49%. Swoop, a WestJet subsidiary, was showing a whopping 77% cancellation rate.
Air Canada was showing a 17% cancel rate, while Air Canada Jazz was at a full 52%.
Air Canada said it cancelled an undetermined number of flights in and out of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, while Toronto-based Porter Airlines said it cancelled some Ontario flights. Sunwing said it had to cancel some southbound flights from western Canadian airports, including Kelowna, B.C., Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg.
The FlightAware website showed 173 cancelled outbound flights at Toronto Pearson Airport as of 4 p.m. EST (32%) and 145 cancellations (43%) at Vancouver International. Those are the two busiest airports in Canada.
Yahoo News reports Amtrak canceled dozens of trains through Christmas, disrupting holiday travel for tens of thousands.
