The number of U.S. flights canceled on Sunday reached territory not seen since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.
More than 8,230 departures in the U.S. had been canceled as of 9 a.m. Eastern, according to Cirium, as a winter storm blanketed much of the country. The last time that many flights were disrupted in one day was on April 2, 2020, when 8,606 departures were canceled as the first wave of pandemic lockdowns took hold.
The record for U.S. flight cancellations was set on March 30, 2020, when 12,143 flights, or nearly half of scheduled departures, were canceled.
The cancellations on Sunday amount to nearly 35 percent of total scheduled departures across the United States, Cirium said. Data from FlightAware, another tracking site, put the number even higher, at more than 10,000 cancellations (FlightAware also includes international arrivals to the United States, among other differences).
Hundreds of flights were canceled on Sunday at major airports serving cities including New York, Washington, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C.
About a dozen smaller, primarily regional airports were closed because of the storm on Sunday morning, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, including New Haven Tweed Airport in Connecticut and Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport in South Carolina.
Gabe Castro-Root is a travel reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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