With more than 6,700 flight cancellations and nearly 6,000 delays, air travel in the eastern United States is struggling to bring travelers to and from their destinations as ice storms cause power outages and catastrophic winter travel nightmares.
According to FoxBusiness.com, Prior to this, Jan. 6 was the worst with just 4,110 cancellations. What makes this storm particularly bad for air travel is its widespread nature that has crippled the usually warm southern states of North Carolina and Georgia. Georgia has extended its state of emergency through Sunday.
With such an extreme winter, that's caused up to 17 deaths along the east coast, it seems flight cancellations are the new normal for people in the city centers. On Wednesday, Atlanta, one of the world's busiest airports accounted for more than 1,600 of the 3,300-plus cancellations across the country making it one of the worst winter travel seasons to date.
Air travel isn't the only form experiencing delays. In Washingtion, citizens are urged to stay off the roads due to catastrophic and dangerous ice conditions causing vehicular traffic jams and accidents all along the freeways and in the urban centers. People are dying of hypothermia and traffic accidents, while others still are stranded in their homes without power.
The freak weather affecting winter travel has been blamed in part on a kink in the jet stream, the high-altitude air currents that dictate weather.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
