Bad week to fly through O’Hare; cancellations near 2,000

A USA Today story from Ben Mutzabaugh:

Bad week to fly through O’Hare; cancellations near 2,000

More than 1,400 hundred flights have been canceled since Wednesday at Chicago O’Hare, which has been hammered by a persistently stormy weather pattern.

Go back to Tuesday — when a computer outage at American Airlines snarled its operations — and more than 1,960 flights have been canceled during that period.

Today alone, flight-tracking service FlightStats counts 495 cancellations at the Midwest hub as of 9:30 a.m. ET this morning (April 18). And with Chicago’s poor weather expected to last into the evening, the tally of cancellations could grow throughout the day.

The majority of today’s O’Hare cancellations come on American and United and their regional partners. United and American each operate large hubs at Chicago O’Hare, where they are the airport’s No. 1 and No. 2 carriers, respectively.

The disruptions are a particular nuisance to American, which on Tuesday was forced to ground its entire fleet for several hours after computer problems prevented it from accessing its check-in and reservations systems.

American canceled more than 900 flights nationwide during the snafu and said it hopedĀ  to resume normal operations Wednesday. But while its computer systems may have been back online, Mother Nature complicated American’s attempt to return to a normal schedule in Chicago.

American was forced to cancel nearly 450 additional flights Wednesday, with many of those coming at stormy O’Hare. American said about 100 of Wednesday’s cancellations were lingering problems from Tuesday’s outage but said Chicago weather accounted for most of the others.

All told, American and its American Eagle affiliate have now canceled more than 1,500 flights since Tuesday.

That’s 1,500 more reasons to charter a private aircraft for travel from JetOptions Private Jets. None of our private jets have been delayed or cancelled in the last week.

 

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