Airlines cancel 7,300 flights ahead of monster storm

NY, NY- Air travelers faced chaos in the Northeast this week, thanks to a major winter storm that threatens to wallop parts of the region with blizzard conditions.

Airlines reacted to the storm by cancelling more than 7,300 flights through Wednesday. Of those, at least 3,200 were already announced by Sunday – a day before the storm’s first flakes fell along the East Coast.

Nearly every big airline also said they would waive change fees for customers scheduled to fly into dozens of airports the storm’s path.

As of 8:15 p.m. ET, more than 2,820 flights had been canceled nationwide for Monday and another 4,200 on Tuesday, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware . Even for Wednesday, nearly 300 flights had been preemptively canceled as airlines try to anticipate the storm’s extended impact. In total, that put the airlines’ collective storm-related cancellations at more than 7,310 for the period stretching from Monday through Wednesday.

It also began to appear increasingly likely that few flights would operate Tuesday at five major airports: New York JFK, Newark Liberty, New York LaGuardia, Boston and Philadelphia. Other airports in the region, including Hartford and Providence — could also see most Tuesday flights grounded.