Major Winter Storm Slams East, Grounding 10,000+ Flights and Knocking Out Power to 800,000

Overview

• The National Weather Service warned of an unusually expansive, long-duration system with ice that could bring crippling to locally catastrophic impacts across the Southeast.
• FlightAware reported more than 10,100 U.S. flight cancellations on Sunday after over 4,000 on Saturday, pushing the weekend total beyond 14,000.
• Airlines adjusted operations as JetBlue canceled about 1,000 flights through Monday, Delta modified schedules, and United proactively grounded flights in expected hot spots.
• President Trump approved emergency declarations for twelve states and the Department of Energy authorized backup generation in Texas and the mid-Atlantic to protect the grid.
• Disney-bound travel took a major hit as thousands of families canceled trips, with airlines warning that aircraft and crew repositioning could take days or weeks to normalize schedules.