Flight cancellations breached the 4000-mark on Friday as powerful winter storm continued to disrupt travel plans for thousands of fliers across the United States.
A day after nearly 2,700 flight cancellations, several airlines hit the pause button on more than 4,400 flight operations on Friday, according to flight tracking site FlightAware.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, New York’s LaGuardia and Chicago reported the highest flight cancellations on Friday, according to FlightAware data.
Apart from the cancellations, about 5,750 delays were recorded as of 2 p.m. ET, reported CNN.
New York’s Buffalo Niagara International Airport had to shut down flights entirely due to “hazardous weather conditions”.
“The Buffalo Airport Airfield has closed due to hazardous weather conditions, and all flights scheduled for the evening have been cancelled”, a tweet from the airport’s official Twitter account stated.
The powerful winter storm comes during one of the busiest holiday travel seasons, upending travel plans for millions of passengers, as even some of the long-distance and regional rail lines will remain shut down till Sunday.
Even bus lines were suspended, as the state highway officials reported closed freeways and severe crashes.
Powerlines disrupted
Extreme weather across the country disrupted the power lines of more than 1.25 million homes and businesses across the southern and eastern US on Friday morning.
The largest power outage was in North Carolina, where more than 150,000 people were without power, according to the tracking site Poweroutage.us.
Meanwhile, heavy snows are expected in parts of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio and are projected to move toward the Northeast this weekend, the National Weather Service said, as “significant” freezing rain is expected in the Pacific Northwest.
(With inputs from agencies)
