Texas airports—most notably Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Dallas Love Field (DAL) and Austin-Bergstrom (AUS)—are suffering mass flight cancelations due to ice storms in central and south Texas, which have entered their third day.
According to FlightAware.com, DFW has canceled 75 percent of its flights on Wednesday (648 in total), while Love Field has canceled 68 percent of its flights (197). Another 166 flights have been canceled in Austin, good for 51 percent of the airport’s capacity. Thirty-two flights (21 percent) have been canceled at San Antonio International Airport (SAT). Two airports in Houston have a combined 57 canceled flights.
American and Southwest Airlines appear to be the most affected by the storms. The former has canceled over 800 flights so far today, while the latter has canceled 670. Regional airlines Envoy Air (which has hubs at DFW, Chicago O’Hare and Miami) and SkyWest (which has hubs across the West Coast, Southwest and Midwest) have canceled 206 and 143 flights, respectively.
Both American and Southwest have issued travel alerts, exception policies and waiver codes in response to the weather. Visit www.aa.com/travel-alerts and www.southwest.com/historical-waiver for more information.
According to CNN, the storms and windy conditions are spread from Texas to West Virginia, with Nashville also seeing a high number of cancelations today (54). The National Weather Service has a Winter Storm Warning in effect for Eastern, North and Central Texas through 9 a.m. Thursday, February 2. “Travel is strongly discouraged,” the warning said, adding that “roads will become nearly impassible in some areas [and] bridges and overpasses will remain icy.
The Dallas Morning News points out that this is now the third year in a row that the Dallas region has been hit with ice storms and snow in late January/early February. Last year, airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights due to an ice storm that hit North Texas; the year prior, historic cold temperatures and snow buckled Texas’ electric grid and stopped nearly all airport traffic due to icy roads and runways.
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