Airlines start to cut Monday service in wake of snowstorm

Airlines canceled almost 6,300 flights in the USA and beyond this weekend as blizzard conditions, cold and ice hit much of the US, with East Coast cities feeling the most impact. A steady stream of more than three dozen flights were showing as cancelled for much of the morning, Saturday. Those cancelations center on Philadelphia, Washington and New York City.

MWAA’s priority is protecting the safety of passengers and employees who will travel to the airports when flights resume.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority announced today the runways at Reagan National and Dulles International are expected to remain closed through Sunday, Jan. 24.

The number of cancelations for all airlines on Monday is 320, but FlightAware says that is sure to rise.

Highlighting the scope of the storm’s disruption, almost 50 flights – or about 10% of the day’s schedule – had been grounded in the Mexico’s tropical beach destination of Cancun, according to FlightAware’s count.

Snow has blanketed parts of the mid-Atlantic since Friday, including Baltimore and Washington, D.C., according to the National Weather Service. The airports included vary by airline but include some cities in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia all the way up the coast to New Hampshire and MA.

In American Airlines’ case, passengers making flight changes will have the ticket-reissue charge waived for one ticket change. Friday saw 3,100 cancellations, most of which were made by airlines a day in advance.

They include: American Airlines (789 flights canceled); Southwest (492); ExpressJet (194); Republic (171); United (166); Delta (147); Mesa (111) and JetBlue (88) among others. Almost all of the flights were coming from and heading to the big eastern airports where the blizzard was wreaking the most havoc. It also lets airlines restart the system quicker because they have planes and crews in place.

The Pitt Greenville Airport and the Coastal Carolina Airport both had cancellations for three flights Saturday.