Air travelers faced chaos Monday in the Northeast due to a major winter storm that grounded thousands of airline flights even before the first snowflakes had fallen in the region, US Today reported.
Airlines reacted to a major snowstorm that's expected to wallop parts of the Northeast by cancelling more than 5,200 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 10:10 a.m., more than 2,370 flights had been canceled nationwide for Monday and another 2,725 on Tuesday, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware .
And, even for Wednesday, nearly 120 flights had already been canceled as airlines try to anticipate the storm's extended impact on their operations. In total, that put the airlines' collective storm-related cancellations at more than 5,200 for Monday through Wednesday.
As for the poor weather, the region's major air hubs were expected to see snow develop Monday, with conditions worsening into the evening. Tuesday was expected to be even worse – so bad that all flights may end up being grounded at some of the busiest airports.
American and United, the nation's two biggest carriers, each say they plan to do just that.