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Airlines have preemptively canceled more than 1,300 flights for Saturday, upending Christmas travel across the US for the third consecutive day.
Major hubs in the east are seeing the greatest number of cancellations, including Chicago O’Hare, New York LaGuardia and Detroit.
More than half of departures were canceled at Chicago Midway Friday, along with two-thirds of departing flights in Cleveland. Buffalo’s airport shut down completely Friday evening.
Snow and ice are an obvious factor in many cancellations, but severe winds and the wind chill are a problem, too, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN Friday.
“It’s really about that that frigid temperature that you’re seeing,” Buttigieg said. “That limits the ability of the ground crews to operate. They make it look easy. You see that they’ve got a lot of winter weather gear, but there’s still only so long that these workers can be on the ground servicing these aircraft before it’s a safety issue and they need to get back inside.”
Planes at multiple airports require de-icing before departing, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Among Thursday, Friday, and advance cancellations for Saturday, more than 9,000 pre-Christmas flights have already been canceled nationwide.
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