Flight delays and outright cancellations snarled airport operations nationwide Thursday, as a severe winter storm rolled across more than half the country.
At Valley International Airport, six flights had been canceled by mid-afternoon, most of them American Airlines flights originating at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
At McAllen-Miller International Airport, a pair of American flights from DFW were canceled, and at Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport, another American flight from Dallas also was canceled.
The flight disruption in the Valley was merely a taste of a much larger disruption in air travel, with thousands of flights canceled Thursday and pre-emptively on Friday, as a major winter storm stretched from El Paso east to the Canadian Maritime provinces, about 3,000 miles in all.
Southwest Airlines as of Thursday had canceled about 15 percent of its schedule, or around 500 flights, while American eliminated 15 percent of its schedule and United Airlines canceled 200 flights, about 10 percent of its total, CNN reported.
“Because of the ice storm, they need to cancel,” said Jose Mulet, director of air service and business development at Valley International. “A lot of these airports in the South are not equipped with de-icing equipment, which is very expensive, but also you need to provide special training for the ground-handling people to actually deploy that liquid to the airplanes.”
A winter storm warning for sleet and snow was issued for all of Texas north of San Antonio.
In Dallas, freezing rain late Wednesday night lasted until just after midnight, when it changed over to sleet, National Weather Service forecasters said. At around 10 a.m., as temperatures continued to fall, the precipitation then changed to snow, with a quarter-inch of ice underneath an estimated 3 inches of snow Thursday.
As of Thursday afternoon, 174 flights had been canceled at DFW.
At Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, similar conditions prevailed, and although the airport remained open Thursday, an airport spokesperson said the majority of incoming and outgoing flights had been canceled.
By Thursday afternoon, 195 incoming flights had been canceled, along with 221 departures.
According to the online flight tracking service FlightAware, 164 flights were canceled at Houston Bush International.
