While it won’t be news to hundreds of thousands of people who were hoping to be somewhere else today, the sheer volume of flight cancellations and delays caused by the winter storm that swept the eastern half of North America on Saturday and Sunday was notable. FlightAware said 12,430 flights were canceled in North America and a further 20,458 were delayed by 10 p.m. Eastern. Aviation analysts at Ciriium said that was the highest tally on the Misery Map since COVID and will take days to clean up. A lot of the flights were canceled before the snow, sleet, ice, and rain coated everything in its path, depending on latitude. All flights into and out of Reagan National were grounded. Similarly depressing numbers affected most major airports on the eastern seaboard, but they got better as you went west. The weather was great on the West Coast and in Florida, too, but flights involving eastern airports to and from there were canceled.
Not many of those who hoped to fly on the weekend ever made it to the airport. Airlines started canceling flights on Friday to keep their customers, aircraft, and crews from getting stranded. Similarly, a total of 3,663 of flights scheduled for Monday were preemptively canceled late Sunday and a few dozen were off the schedule for Tuesday. The storm hit New England late Sunday and was also burying Eastern Canada in feet of snow before heading out to sea.
As a pilot, I rely on the National Weather Service to help plan flights, including avoiding forecast severe weather, but over 800 NWS weather forecasters, engineers and scientists have been fired.