Over 5,000 Flights Disrupted In U.S. As Americans Travel Home From Holiday Weekend
Thunderstorms in the Midwest delayed flights at Chicago-O'Hare International Airport. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Travelers at Chicago-O'Hare faced the worst delays Sunday as thunderstorms moved across the region, with the Federal Aviation Administration estimating inbound flight delays could last more than an hour and 15 minutes.
Nearly 800 flights to and from O'Hare were delayed by 5 p.m. EDT on Sunday, according to FlightAware data.
Inbound flights to Reagan Washington International Airport were also delayed by an average of 40 minutes due to staffing shortages, the FAA said in an alert.
The rest of the weekend also saw considerable flight delays across the country, peaking at over 9,100 on the Fourth of July.
54,706. That's how many air travelers the United States saw on Thursday, June 26—the busiest air travel day of the year so far, the FAA reported last week. The agency also predicted busy air travel days for the entire extended holiday weekend, with an expected 51,000 flights on July 3, before Independence Day. The FAA said it was expecting roughly 47,966 flights on Sunday—meaning if these predictions are correct, over 10% of all flights on Sunday were delayed as of early evening.
The pace of flights being delayed accelerated throughout Sunday afternoon, according to FlightAware. Flight delays can compound later in the day due to planes not reaching their destinations on time earlier, which is often the case when there is widespread bad weather, with summertime being particularly notorious for the formation of thunderstorms that can disrupt air travel.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
16 minutes ago
- Washington Post
D.C. storms trigger flooding rains, violent winds before dramatic skies
A line of heavy thunderstorms swept across the D.C. region Wednesday evening, unleashing torrential rains that flooded streets and violent wind gusts that toppled trees. The storms produced spectacular skies — including menacing clouds on approach and vivid rainbows upon exiting. The storms — fueled by the heat and humidity of a sweltering summer day — barreled through the region between about 5 and 8 p.m. Unlike the storms on Tuesday — which were intense near the Chesapeake Bay but rather tame near D.C., Wednesday's packed their greatest fury in the Beltway area. Trees came down in Fairfax, Arlington and Alexandria in Virginia; D.C.; and western Prince George's County in Maryland. Floodwaters also raced through parts of Alexandria and D.C.
Wall Street Journal
18 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Why America Still Can't Get Disaster Alerts Right
America's emergency-warning infrastructure still isn't getting enough people out of harm's way. Federal, state and local authorities share responsibility for alerting citizens that they are in danger. But despite continued technological advances, the country's patchwork of digital and physical emergency-alert tools is often a step behind Mother Nature, with deadly consequences.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Back-to-back floods in New Mexico and Texas with very different outcomes
Eddie Gutierrez looked out the window of his brewery as the river turned into a raging torrent and swept away his neighbour's house. Three people, including two children, were killed in Tuesday afternoon's floods in Ruidoso, New Mexico, and numerous properties were destroyed. But the village was prepared, Mr Gutierrez said, with flood experts already on the ground and plans in place. By next morning the sun was shining, and the town was "almost business as usual". "It's a hard thing to see that and then the next day is almost completely normal, it's almost as if it didn't happen," he told the BBC. The neighbouring state of Texas also experienced a major flood just a few days earlier, but with a very different outcome. The ferocity of the inundation in Texas caught forecasters and state officials by surprise, killing at least 119 people. In Ruidoso on Tuesday, up to 3.5in (8.8cm) of rain fell, sending water hurtling down the surrounding mountainside and swelling the river to a record high above 20ft, before a swathe of the village was flooded. The area surrounding Ruidoso was already vulnerable to flooding because of wildfires that hit New Mexico last summer. Two people were killed and hundreds of homes were destroyed as the South Fork and Salt fires swept through Ruidoso in June 2024. Residents were forced to evacuate as the conflagrations burned 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of land on either side of the village. Days later, residents faced the one-two punch of devastating flooding. Homes surrounding Mr Gutierrez's brewery were among properties still vacant after those wildfires last year. The house that he saw floating down the river on Tuesday afternoon was one of many that had been left empty after the wildfires. Local officials are well aware that "burn scars" - areas of vegetation that no long absorb rainfall - are likely to cause more flooding in an area for years after fires. The National Weather Service (NWS) said two "burn scars" around Ruidoso would make the charred soil left behind from the wildfires "as water-repellent as a pavement". Tuesday's flooding was more of that side effect. "These floods were expected, we knew they would come and they did," Mr Gutierrez said. When a community is familiar with weather risks, they adapt, notes Upmanu Lall, director of the Water Institute at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. "The way human nature works, is that if they've experienced a event recently that informs the response," he told the BBC. "If your experience is you got hit with a flood, you probably will evacuate, if you keep getting warnings and nothing happens, you're unlikely to evacuate." One state over, in Texas, the flooding caught many unawares. One reason was the sheer, staggering volume of rainfall - an estimated 100bn gallons, surpassing the daily flow over Niagara Falls. The catastrophe unfolded before daybreak last Friday as the Guadalupe River rose 26ft (8m) in the span of just 45 minutes while young children and staff at summer camps were asleep as weather alerts were being sent. Search crews in Texas are still sifting through debris for scores of missing people. Experts have said there were a number of factors that led to the tragic floods in Texas, including the pre-dawn timing, the location of some homes and the extreme weather. Questions have been raised about whether authorities provided adequate flood warnings before the disaster, and why people were not evacuated earlier. "We didn't even have a warning," Joe Herring, the mayor of badly hit Kerrville, Texas, told CNN. At least three dead in New Mexico flash flooding At least 104 dead and dozens missing in Texas floods as more rain looms 'Hero' dad, twin girls and riverside campers among Texas flood victims
