USA TODAY's Weather map showed a winter storm moving through the Great Lakes region on Monday, Nov. 26, 2018. (Photo: USA TODAY Weather)
Last update: 8:20 a.m. ET. Next update: By 10:30 a.m. ET.
Travelers faced more flight woes on Monday as a winter storm wreaked havoc on flights across the Midwest.
The wintry weather compounded problems that began for air travelers on Sunday, when more than 1,200 flights were canceled across the USA. Major airlines were waiving rebooking fees at a number of airports across the region.
On Monday, more than 700 flights had been canceled nationwide and another 520 delayed as of 8:20 a.m. ET, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware.com.
Most of those came in the Midwest, where wintry weather that began Sunday continued to affect major hubs in the region.
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In Chicago, more than 380 combined arrivals and departures had been grounded Monday at the city’s busy O’Hare airport. That cancellation tally accounted for about 13 percent of all of the day’s flights at O’Hare, a major connecting hub for both American and United.
Monday’s woes seemed certain to add to the misery of flyers who were stranded there on the busy post-Thanksgiving Sunday, when another 800 cancellations were counted at the USA’s third-busiest airport.
It all came as millions of air travelers were trying to make their way home on Sunday, the busiest travel day of the Thanksgiving holiday period.
But it wasn’t just O’Hare where travelers ran into problems.
Across town at Chicago’s Midway Airport, about 70 combined arrivals and departures and been scrubbed on Monday. That followed the cancellation of about 120 flights there on Sunday.
In Kansas City, Missouri, thousands of stranded travelers are hoping for better flight schedules Monday after major disruptions there a day earlier. The airport halted all flight operations for about four hours on Sunday amid blizzard conditions, leading to the cancellation of about half of the airport’s entire flight schedule for the day.
After low visibility & 5.8”-record snow led to a 4-hour closure yesterday & more than 100 cancelled flights, many aircraft were not in KC for early a.m. flights, leading to cancellations. Late morning shows improvement on https://t.co/sshKJZCarq.
For Monday, about two dozen departures – roughly 13 percent of the day’s schedule – had already been grounded as of 7:20 a.m. ET. But only four arrivals were listed as canceled by FlightAware, indicating that Kansas City’s flight schedule may be set for a rebound as airlines get their crews and airplanes back into place.
A number of other Midwestern airports suffered significant delays and cancellations on Sunday, including Milwaukee; Omaha, Nebraska; and Cedar Rapids and Des Moines in Iowa.
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Problems also spilled into other regions on Sunday. Delays spiked at Boston Logan and New York LaGuardia, where a mix of overcast skies and high holiday flight volumes led to slowdowns.
A number of other U.S. airports — from Los Angeles and Phoenix in the West to Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston Bush Intercontinental in Texas to Orlando and Atlanta in the Southeast — also saw significant delays on Sunday. Some were likely effects from problems in the Midwest, while others were related to congested flight schedules or weather in other areas.
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