Hurricane season won’t end for more than two weeks, but the season’s first named winter storm is already causing travel nightmares ahead of what’s expected to be an especially busy weekend.
Winter Storm Avery is expected to bring a mix of rain, snow and ice through the South, Midwest, and Northeast in the back half of this week. And airlines are already reacting. As of 3:40 p.m. ET, 1,113 flights have been canceled and over 4,300 have been delayed, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware..
While not all of those are related to Avery, the majority are. Among the most affected airports are Washington D.C.’s Reagan National, Newark Liberty International, St. Louis, and New York City’s LaGuardia.
Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and JetBlue have waived their change fees for passengers traveling today in a number of cities, including all New York airports, Boston, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia. Delta and JetBlue, at present, are only addressing the situation today. United is waiving any fees on travel to or from affected cities through Nov. 17.
So far, American Airlines has not posted any notifications on its website about waived fees, but airlines generally follow each other’s lead in these instances.
The delays and cancellations come right as the travel crunch begins for the Thanksgiving holiday. AAA says 54 million Americans will travel this Thanksgiving, the most since 2005; 4.27 million of those will be on planes (though AAA does not factor the weekend before Thanksgiving into those predictions).