A winter storm packing snowfall and heavy rain over the eastern United States has forced hundreds of flight cancelations, and major airlines are offering travelers waivers to change their flights without a fee. A major airline’s own problems are making things worse.
According to the website FlightAware, which tracks flight operations, nearly 2,000 flights have been canceled within and into or out of the United States on Wednesday. FlightAware’s live map shows a significant number of delays and cancelations at D.C.-area airports, at Chicago O’Hare and at airports in the New York City area.
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American Airlines said in a statement that as of 2 p.m. eastern time, American along with its regional partners has canceled 700 flights on Wednesday. The airline said a majority of those cancelations were on smaller, regional aircrafts. Delta Airlines said it has canceled approximately 150 flights across the eastern part of the country.
United Airlines said it was seeing the most impact at Dulles Airport in the D.C. area where it has significantly reduced United Express operations. The airline also said it had a handful of cancelations at O’Hare Airport in Chicago and was continuing to monitor the situation.
A separate issue has forced Southwest Airlines to cancel a number of flights this week. In a statement, the airline said that following negotiations with a mechanics union on Feb. 12 it experienced an unprecedented number of out-of-service aircrafts in four maintenance locations.
“The number of aircraft out of the fleet has driven cancellations, in some cases extremely long delays and other operational impacts over the last week,” the airline said in a statement. The airline seemed to lay the blame on the union, Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, saying it “has a history of work disruptions.”
The union shot back at Southwest, saying that the scapegoating of technicians “does not bode well for the airline’s safe operations.”
“For Southwest’s leadership to connect the airline’s self-declared “operational emergency” to collective bargaining negotiations is simply an attempt to divert attention away from the airline’s safety issues,” the union said in the statement.
According to USA Today, on Tuesday, the airline canceled 191 flights and delayed 858 flights.
Southwest did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
You can find information on travel waivers for the airlines below:
Photo: Airline passengers wait out a major snowstorm as flights were canceled or severely delayed at Albany International Airport in Colonie, N.Y., Sunday, Jan. 20, 2019. A major winter storm that blanketed much of the Midwest with snow earlier in the weekend is barreling toward New England, where it is expected to wreak transportation havoc from slick and clogged roads to hundreds of canceled airline flights. Photo by Hans Pennink/Associated Press