New York Flight Upheaval Disrupts Air Travel Throughout U.S.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-29/new-york-flight-upheaval-disrupts-air-travel-throughout-u-s-.html


In this handout satellite image provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Hurricane Sandy, pictured at 00:15 UTC, churns off the east coast in the Atlantic Ocean on October 28, 2012. While carriers are halting operations at LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty airports, flights to and from other areas will also be affected.

Hurricane Sandy’s grounding of more than 6,800 commercial flights, including all departures and arrivals at metropolitan New York’s three major airports, will disrupt air-travel networks throughout the U.S. and beyond.

Scrubbed flights include about 1,200 yesterday and more than 5,500 today, said Daniel Baker, chief executive officer of Houston-based FlightAware, a flight-tracking company. Airlines will begin canceling flights for Oct. 30 and Oct. 31 as the weather forecast becomes clearer, he said.

While carriers are halting operations at LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty airports, flights to and from other areas will also be affected. New York’s airports together represent a linchpin in the U.S. network, serving more than 52 million departing passengers last year and outstripping the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.
“This is a time period that’s relatively slow for travel, so it’s mostly going to affect business travelers,” Rick Seaney, chief executive officer of website Farecompare, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “If this was happening during Thanksgiving week, it would just be a nightmare.”