A major snowstorm is hammering the Chicago area, disrupting thousands of flights at both O’Hare and Midway airports during one of the busiest travel days of the year.
The FAA has a ground delay program in place for O’Hare Airport with an average delay of 300 minutes, and a ground stop for Midway Airport until 2:15 p.m CT.
According to FlightAware, 886 flights in and out of O’Hare Airport have been cancelled as of 1 p.m. local time. Midway Airport has also seen 128 flights cancelled so far.
For O’Hare, most of these cancellations involve American and United’s regional subsidiaries, such as SkyWest, Envoy, and Republic. The mainline flights, although seeing plenty of delays, have relatively held off on the cancellations for now, at least compared to the regionals. Midway Airport, however, is a hub for Southwest, which can have a greater impact on the carrier’s operations around the country.
Many ground vehicles can be spotted at O’Hare on Flightradar24 combating the snow:
This snowstorm strikes during one of the busiest travel days of the year.
These delays and cancellations also come just a day after Airbus’ sudden recall of some Airbus A320 Family aircraft, requiring software updates for each aircraft. This delayed several flights by a couple of hours and provided headaches for airlines, particularly American and Delta.
Thanksgiving travel is only heating up for airports and carriers, as American Airlines notes that Sunday, Nov. 30, will be the busiest travel day, followed by Monday, Dec. 1. The airline has a total of 80,759 scheduled flights this Thanksgiving travel period, a portion of which has felt the effects of the Airbus recall on Friday and the Chicago snowstorm Saturday.
Featured image by the author.
