Travelers heading to and from the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport in recent days faced increased delays and cancellations due to severe weather conditions across the Northeast.
A series of thunderstorms along the East Coast caused major air traffic issues in New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C., said airport director Nic Longo. The problems, which started this weekend and continued through Wednesday, affected all major airlines.
On Monday, seven outgoing flights were canceled at the Burlington International Airport, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking website. This was 10% of the total scheduled outgoing flights that day.
Another 12 outgoing flights were delayed, accounting for 17% of their scheduled flights, according to the website.
As a response to the storms — which have included lightning that forces flights to pause — many major airports decided to stop all planes from leaving their originating airport until the weather cleared, Longo said.
Flights going to all three major airports in the New York City area on Tuesday night were grounded, according to the Associated Press.
Typically, pauses to air travel caused by lightning are relatively short and don’t last longer than an afternoon, Longo said. The impact of this weekend’s stoppage was compounded by how long it took to rebook all of the flights.
“The problem is when you start aggregating all of the flights going to these big hub destination airports, you don’t just have BTV. You have 150 different airports all trying to get there at the same time because of the delay,” Longo said.
Nearly 6,000 flights traveling within, into or out of the United States were canceled from Sunday to Tuesday, according to FlightAware.
These delays came at a critical time, with less than a week before the Fourth of July holiday, Longo said. The flight changes left some travelers to change their plans.
The delays and cancellations were not related at all to the smoke blowing down from wildfires in Canada, Longo said.
Longo said flight schedules were starting to return to normal on Wednesday, though five outgoing flights were still canceled and 10 were delayed, according to FlightAware.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Flight cancellations and delays spike just before the holiday week.