On Wednesday March 21, more than 4,440 flights were canceled across the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. According to Flight Aware, flight tracking service; more than 3200 had been cancelled by late Tuesday and that continued till Wednesday afternoon.
All the late schedules were due to late-season nor’easter which brought snow to nearly every major city like New York, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and this was the fourth time to hit the reason within 3 weeks.
The cancellation is still remaining as more than 590 flights are preemptively grounded on Thursday. The latest nor’easter has forced the cancellation of more than 5,480 flights during the past three days.
All major airports were seeing disruption in schedule and in most airports about 3 out of 4 flights were cancelled. Carriers tend to halt the flight in order to keep planes from becoming stranded in poor weather more easily than if they continued to operate until the worst of the weather moved in. This helps airlines to restart the service after weather clears without having to worry about planes or crews that became stuck in unexpected places.
Airlines have rolled out policy of easy rebooking to let customers to move their travel dates away from stormy weather without paying standard change and rebooking fees. Big airlines in US flying to mid-Atlantic and northeast have already done so for passengers ticketed to fly there this week.
Most policies allowed fliers to make one change to their itineraries — with some restrictions — without paying extra. Some also have the option to apply the full remaining value of their tickets toward future travel.
