Winter storm causes massive flight and Amtrak train disruptions, snarling U.S. travel
A winter storm that is spreading across much of the U.S. is snarling travel, with thousands of flights either canceled or delayed on Monday morning. Amtrak also canceled several routes along the East coast and Mid-Atlantic states.
As of Monday morning, about 34 million Americans are under winter storm warnings that span from Illinois to Mid-Atlantic states including New Jersey and Delaware. The storm is dropping a combination of snow, ice and plunging temperatures across the U.S., also creating havoc for drivers amid icy road conditions and blizzard-like weather.
Airlines canceled almost 2,000 flights within, to or out of the U.S. as of 11 a.m. ET on Jan. 6, while another roughly 2,400 flights have been delayed, according to data from flight-tracker FlightAware. Southwest had the most cancellations, at about 360, followed by American Airlines and Republic, with 176 flight cancellations each, the data shows.
Amtrak, meanwhile, canceled multiple trains, noting that the disruptions were "for the safety of Amtrak customers and employees, due to forecasted winter weather." The train service said that while the Acela is operating between Boston and Washington, D.C., it had canceled several other routes between Washington and New York, as well as between other mid-Atlantic cities.
Airlines have been offering to rebook scheduled flights for travelers without incurring change fees. For instance, Southwest Airlines said in a travel advisory that customers holding reservations on flights across 14 U.S. airports likely to be disrupted due to bad weather may alter their travel plans free of charge.
Airlines must either offer passengers a choice between a refund or rebooking on another flight if their original flight is canceled, said airline compensation expert Ivaylo Danailov of SkyRefund in an email.
"Recent regulations, effective Oct. 28, 2024, mandate that airlines automatically provide cash refunds for canceled or significantly changed flights without requiring passengers to request them," he noted. "A significant change is defined as a delay exceeding three hours for domestic flights or six hours for international flights, changes to departure or arrival airports, increased connections, downgrades in service class or flights with limited accessibility."
The storm's reach is impacting the Mid-Atlantic states on Monday, with a hard freeze expected as far south as Florida. The winter storm is expected to move offshore into the Atlantic on Tuesday.
While the polar vortex of ultra-cold air usually stays penned up around the North Pole, it sometimes escapes or stretches down to the U.S., Europe or Asia, creating the intense cold of this storm. A fast-warming Arctic gets some of the blame for the increase in polar vortex stretching or wandering, studies have shown.
Delays in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and St. Louis
Several airports in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions faced the largest number of cancellations and delays, according to FlightAware.
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, located a few miles south of Washington, D.C., had the most number of inbound and outbound cancellations as of the morning of Jan. 6, the data shows. About 250 flights scheduled to leave Reagan were canceled on Monday morning, while another roughly 200 inbound flights were also canceled.
About 110 flights scheduled to leave from Baltimore's Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, giving the airport the second-highest number of outbound cancellations. Washington Dulles airport and St. Louis Lambert International Airport had the third and fourth-largest number of canceled outbound flights, at more than 90 each.
