Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
Thousands of flights in the United States have been canceled or delayed due to severe winter weather that has affected various regions of the country.
The FlightAware flight tracking website reported that more than 828 flights to, from and through the United States have been delayed until the early hours of this Sunday. Additionally, almost 1,256 flights have been cancelled.
The same site showed that On Saturday, December 24, more than 7,855 flights were delayed and almost 3,457 flights were cancelled. The day before, more than 10,415 flights were delayed and 5,732 flights were cancelled. On Thursday the 22nd, more than 10,000 flights were delayed and more than 2,500 cancelled; and on Wednesday more than 8,100 flights were delayed.
Southwest, the most affected airline
Southwest has been the airline company most affected, with 22% of its flights canceled and another 26% of flights delayed after noon last Friday.
The airline issued waivers for the Pacific Northeast, Mountain Northeast, and Atlantic and Northeast regions. It said it will waive fees for travel that is rebooked on or before December 25 for the Pacific Northeast. In addition to Southwest, other carriers have offered various waivers to passengers.
The Hopper travel app estimates that approximately 54 million passengers will leave the country’s airports during the Christmas and New Year holidays. Thursday the 22nd and Friday the 23rd were projected to be the busiest days of the year, with 3.34 million passengers scheduled to fly per day. Considerable increases in the prices of tickets purchased for those days were reported.
In recent days specialized services in meteorology forecast that bad weather, consisting of heavy snow, ice and strong winds, would hit various parts of the country, from the plains and the Midwest to the East Coast through Saturday, followed later by a wave of arctic air.
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