Around 7,600 flights to and from, within the US were cancelled, as a blizzard began covering much of the Eastern US.
The bulk of Friday’s 3,500 cancelations were in Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. Another 4,100 flights were cancelled for Saturday.
The cancelations were centred on Philadelphia, Washington, and New York, with airlines essentially shutting down all flights into those cities.
By Sunday afternoon, however, the airlines hope to be back to a full schedule to handle the typical influx of business travellers heading out.
Overall, the airlines have cancelled about 15 percent of their scheduled flights in the U.S. for Friday and Saturday.
Since saturday is the slowest travel day of the week, there were a little more than 22,000 flights scheduled to, from or within the U.S., according to FlightAware.
That is about 5,000 fewer flights and 400,000 fewer passengers than on Thursday or Friday.
All major airlines have issued waivers for travel over the weekend, allowing passengers to rebook onto earlier or later flights to avoid the storms.
