ATLANTA (AP) — 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 dumped heavy snow across the Midwest raced toward the East Coast with the potential for high winds and tornadoes, the National Weather Service warned Monday.
More than 4,400 flights scheduled to fly into, out of or within the U.S. on Monday have been called off, and roughly 10,400 other U.S. flights were delayed, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware. Nearly 290 flights in the U.S. scheduled for Tuesday have been canceled.
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 she and her family could book another flight doesn’t leave until Tuesday afternoon.
Impact to major airport hubs
The nationwide cancellations included about 570 in and out of Chicago O’Hare International, more than 430 at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International and over 270 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.
TSA staffing strains some checkpoints
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.
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.
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.
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 has said more than 300 TSA agents have quit since the start of the shutdown.
Security wait times could worsen
TSA union leaders in Atlanta held a news conference Monday outside Hartsfield-Jackson, warning that air travelers could face increasingly long wait times as the shutdown continues. Even so, union leaders said, many officers are still reporting to work despite mounting financial strain.
Many TSA workers “are coping with eviction notices, vehicle repossessions, empty refrigerators and overdrawn bank accounts,” said Aaron Barker, a local leader with the American Federation of Government Employees. Supporters behind him held signs reading, “We want a paycheck, not a rain check.”
Travelers flying out of New Orleans on Sunday and Monday were advised to arrive at least three hours early “due to impacts from the federal government’s partial shutdown,” Louis Armstrong International Airport said on X. And the airport in Austin, Texas, shared a video on X taken at 5:30 a.m. local time showing the security line spilling out onto the sidewalk outside.
Back in Atlanta, Mel Stewart and his wife arrived four hours earlier than usual for their flight out of Hartsfield-Jackson to make up for longer TSA lines.
“I think it’s being politicized way too much — way too much,” Stewart said Monday of the shutdown. “And these people are working. They work hard, and for TSA people not to get paid, that’s silly.”
Yamat reported from Las Vegas. Associated Press reporter Margery A. Beck in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.
