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Airlines canceled more than 2,300 U.S. flights on Thursday, according to the FlightAware, as they continued to grapple with extremely cold temperatures in the Midwest.
Those cancellations are on top of 4,200 cancellations over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday.
“It’s 0 degrees right now, which feels downright balmy compared with where we’ve been,” United spokesman Charles Hobart said from Chicago on Thursday afternoon.
The temperature in Chicago topped out at minus-12 on Wednesday, causing United to cancel approximately 80% of flights from its largest hub, Chicago O’Hare. The carrier canceled a similar number of O’Hare flights Wednesday.
American, which also has a hub at O’Hare, cancelled a combined 590 flights from the Windy City on Wednesday and Thursday and 1,425 flights network-wide over those two days.
Southwest, which has its largest base at Chicago Midway, said it had cancelled 1,500 flights Thursday and a total of 4,500 flights this week due extreme weather.
Hobart explained that United started work on paring down its flight schedule ahead of the bitterly cold polar vortex last week. Cancellations have been necessary to protect workers from exposure, he said, and also because a portion of the aircraft United would typically stage at O’Hare and other Midwest stations needed to be repositioned so they wouldn’t freeze.
Airlines took various steps to ease the burden on workers during the dangerous cold snap. For example, United set up heated shelters for workers at O’Hare and elsewhere. American provided warming vans stocked with hot beverages and other cold weather accessories for ramp workers at O’Hare and also served chili to O’Hare employees.
Hobart said United expected to operate more flights in Chicago on Friday than it did on Wednesday or Thursday. Though temperatures there are expected to warm to a high of around 20 degrees on Friday, new difficulties could be caused by an expected snowfall of up to 3 inches Thursday night.
Source: travelweekly.com
