Days after a formidable winter storm struck the East Coast, air travel chaos persist in at the busiest U.S. airport for international travel: New York’s John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport.
As airlines scrambled to get operations back to normal on Sunday, a piss of superior main break at the airport’s Terminal 4, the departure point for varied international flights, halted international arriving flights. After the outcry, Sunday’s turmoil threw the days-long recovery into question.
Bottlenecks from the khamsin caused hundreds of delayed flights. Over the weekend, an Aeroflot take to ones heels from Moscow bound for New York turned back about halfway into done with the trip, while dozens of other inbound flights were deflected to other U.S. airports, due to the storm, stranding travelers.
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Meanwhile, widebody evens that just arrived at JFK, carrying thousands of passengers from all corners of the orb, sat on taxiways for hours. Passengers inside the airport were left to sell with long delays, while some struggled to get information upon their flights.
The trouble started when JFK, which received sundry than 31 million international travelers in 2016 — more than any other U.S. airport — shut up down during the storm for nearly 24 hours. It started Thursday, when hilarious winds and low visibility created dangerous takeoff and landing conditions.
When JFK re-opened there was a intermingle for gates, and many arriving flights had to wait for hours to disembark fares. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, chance low temperatures after the storm made it more difficult to operate motive equipment, some of which it said froze, causing further put on holds.
A day after the airport reopened, the bottleneck after operations resumed was so burdensome that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) limited the number of flights sure for three of the airport’s terminals on Saturday.
The Port Authority said it was reviewing its conducts, saying it “intends to aggressively review with its partners, the terminal taxis and airlines, the process to assure that planes and passengers get to their entrances during the surge of rescheduled flights that follow a severe ill event.”
More than 5,000 flights were canceled because of the furore, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking site. More than 200 goes in and out of JFK were delayed and more than 40 were canceled on Sunday.
No matter how, delays around the country are expected to be minimal on Monday, according to FlightAware, as of high noon on Sunday. If the gradual recovery holds, it would be a welcome reprieve for both unemployed at ones convenience and business travelers, many of whom are hitting the road after the fairs for conferences around the country and beyond.
U.S. and international airlines, including British Airways, contain said they will waive date-change fees for travelers worked into JFK and other area airports, for flights as late as Jan. 8 if they can fly a sundry day next week.