Sunday: Snow is over, but flight cancellations top 12,000
Updated 1:46 p.m. UTC Jan. 24, 2016
Last update: 8:35 p.m. ET.
The snow is over, but flight cancellations are not.
Despite sunny skies Sunday along much of the East Coast, another brutal day awaited airline passengers. Cancellations piled up again in New York, Washington, Philadelphia and other cities through the Mid-Atlantic, as some of the USA’s busiest airports began to dig out from the Blizzard of 2016 that dumped 2 feet of snow in many big cities.
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Overall, more than 12,330 flights were canceled nationwide since Friday, as the storm moved from the Deep South to New England.
On Sunday alone, More than 3,526 flights were canceled as of 8:35 p.m. ET, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware.
Already, the post-storm restart looks to be a slow-go in most areas.
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Two of Washington, D.C.’s major airports — Dulles and Reagan National — said their runways would remain closed all day Sunday as crews grappled with heavy and drifting snow. Baltimore/Washington — the metro area’s third major airport — indicated the possibility of some flights, but it was unclear if any airlines would choose to fly there Sunday. And even for Monday, nearly half of Dulles’ entire daily schedule had already been scrubbed. At National Airport, about 15% of Monday’s schedule had already been grounded. Even worse, nearly 100 Tuesday flights had already been grounded there.
Flights resumed at airports in New York and Philadelphia, but at greatly reduced schedules.
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Monday looked troublesome, too. Airlines had already canceled 600 flights before midnight Saturday, a number that ballooned to about 1,100 as of 8:35 p.m. ET. Most major airlines said they had hoped to restart services across the East by Monday, but all warned of lighter-than-normal schedules as they worked to get planes and crews into position.
All airlines with operations in the storm’s path have been canceling flights and offering ticketed fliers refunds or waiving change fees that allow them to fly another day. The waiver policies vary by airline, but they generally allow customers to make one change to their itineraries — with some restrictions — at no additional cost.
Scroll down for links to individual airline policies: