WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — For the second straight holiday weekend, passengers across Florida saw a handful of delays at airports during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
According to FlightAware, cold weather and the grounding of Boeing 737 Max planes created the highest number of U.S. flight cancellations in six months during the holiday weekend.
The flight-tracking website said there were 144 flights canceled from O’Hare International Airport in Chicago and 129 from Denver’s airport, each accounting for 14% of total flights from there. Both areas are dealing with various conditions from winter storms.
There were 1,547 cancellations and 7,869 delays in and out of the United States. There are about 45,000 flights per day in the nation.
Weather News
Millions of Americans face below-zero temperatures, weekend storms
Locally, there were a few cancellations at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Palm Beach International Airport. Yet, delays at both airports varied throughout the weekend, per FlightAware.
Kirk Gunn, who was traveling home from Palm Beach International, said he had a few concerns about the weather on Sunday night. He said his flight wasn’t delayed, but he was concerned that the plane wouldn’t make it since it was coming from the Midwest.
“That’s always the challenge to get the plane here on the ground first,” Gunn said. “But hopefully we’ll be able to make it out OK.”
During end-of-year travel, ground delays due to “compact demand” in air travel led to average delays of 256 minutes at Palm Beach International Airport.
