By RIO YAMAT and MARGERY A. BECK Associated Press
Thousands of flights across the U.S. were canceled or delayed Monday as powerful storms swept across the eastern half of the country and a partial government shutdown affecting airport security screeners dragged into a second month.
The disruptions come at an already challenging time for air travel, in part because the shutdown that began Feb. 14 has strained staffing at some security checkpoints. At the same time, airports are crowded with spring break travelers and fans heading to March Madness games, the annual NCAA men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments.
Flight delays and cancellations piled up Monday at some of the nation’s largest airports, including those in New York, Chicago and Atlanta. The storm system that dropped snow by the foot in the Midwest was barreling toward the East Coast with dangerously high winds and the potential for “producing strong and long track tornadoes,” the National Weather Service warned Monday.
More than 3,600 flights scheduled to fly into, out of or within the U.S. on Monday have been called off, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware. Roughly 6,800 other U.S. flights were delayed.
Kelly Price, who was trying to get home to Colorado after a family vacation in Orlando, Florida, said her Sunday night flight wasn’t canceled until early Monday.
“By that time the only place for us to sleep was the airport floor. So we’re all tired and frustrated,” she said, adding that the soonest flight she and her family could book doesn’t leave until Tuesday afternoon.
The nationwide cancellations included nearly 500 in and out of Chicago O’Hare International, more than 300 at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International and over 230 at John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to FlightAware.
Earlier Monday, citing severe weather, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops at Hartsfield-Jackson and Charlotte Douglas International Airport, along with ground delays at JFK and Newark Liberty International Airport.
Danielle Cash found herself stranded in St. Louis on Sunday while trying to get home to Tampa, Florida, after a weekend girls’ trip to Las Vegas. Now she’s spending several hundred dollars more than planned on a hotel room in a snowy city she wasn’t dressed for.
“It was 80 degrees in Tampa when I left and then going to Vegas,” she said. “And it was 90 degrees in the desert.”
Cash said she’s now booked on a flight that will take her to Tennessee before finally returning to Tampa by Tuesday afternoon.
The storms are also unfolding just as airport security screeners missed their first full paycheck over the weekend. The current partial government shutdown affects only the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Transportation Security Administration. It is the third shutdown in less than a year to leave TSA workers temporarily without pay. Once the government reopens, employees will have to wait for back pay.
Democrats in Congress have said Homeland Security won’t get funded until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Some airports have reported longer security lines because of staffing shortages as more TSA workers take on second jobs, can’t afford gas to get to work or leave the profession altogether. Homeland Security said on X last week that more than 300 TSA agents have quit since the start of the shutdown.
Over the weekend, the CEOs of the nation’s top airlines — including Delta, American, United and Southwest — implored Congress to restore funding to Homeland Security and embrace a bipartisan solution that would ensure pay for federal aviation workers during future government shutdowns.
“It’s difficult, if not impossible, to put food on the table, put gas in the car and pay rent when you are not getting paid,” the executives wrote in an open letter to Congress.