Fresh winter storm hits Midwest; more than 600 flights cancelled

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Winter Storm Indra has stranded flights across the Midwest which lashed the US just days after an earlier storm caused thousands of flight cancellations from the Great Plains into the Northeast.

Airlines have already started waiving change fees for several airports which are in the path of the latest storm, dubbed as the “Winter Storm Indra”.

More than 600 flights had been cancelled across the nation on Wednesday and another 1,465 delayed, flight-tracking firm FlightAware counted as of 10:55 a.m. ET. Wednesday’s problems are on top of another 1,500 cancellations reported on Tuesday.

The hardest-hit airport from the latest storm is Detroit, which was forced to ground all flights late Tuesday because of icy conditions. Though the airport said shortly after 10 a.m. ET that flights had resumed still travellers should expect lingering delays and cancellations there.

So far Wednesday, a combined 260 arrivals and departures had been cancelled at Detroit. That accounted for close to 20 per cent of the entire day’s schedule. A similar number of cancellations were reported there on Tuesday.

Detroit Metropolitan Airport is now open. At this time, one runway, the surrounding taxiways and deice pads are operating. Maintenance crews will continue working hard to reopen the rest of the airfield. Customers are still encouraged to check with their airline for flight status.

However, storm-related problems weren’t confined to Detroit. More than 130 combined arrivals and departures were grounded at Chicago’s O’Hare, representing about five per cent of the daily schedule there. O’Hare is a hub for both American and United, and both were waiving rebooking fees.

At Chicago O’Hare, about 770 combined arrivals and departures — or about one out of every three flights – were cancelled Tuesday. About 20 per cent of Tuesday’s schedule was cancelled at Boston and about 15 per cent at Chicago Midway.

Smaller airports seeing a spike in cancellations Wednesday included Lexington, Kentucky; Moline/Quad City, Illinois; and South Bend, Indiana.

Several big airlines – including American, Delta, United, Southwest and Frontier – have put fee waivers in place that cover at least some of the airports being affected by the storms.

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