US travel returning to normal after weather disruptions

On Tuesday approximately 500 flights were canceled at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, and weather disruptions meant that the earliest flights passengers could get out would be on Thursday. Early on Wednesday, around 100 flights were also canceled, but as the day progressed the weather began to improve.

A spokesman for the Chicago Aviation Department, Greg Cunningham, said that airlines at O’Hare Airport requested 75 cots for passengers stranded at the airport on Wednesday night.

When an American Airlines plane skidded on a patch of ice on an airport taxiway on Wednesday, delays at O’Hare increased. No one was injured in the incident, however, and the flight’s 54 passengers were booked on other flights later Wednesday night.

Most airports in the U.S. recovered on Wednesday from the snow and ice that had plagued them during the previous days, but New York-area airports JFK and Newark Liberty were still reporting 3-4 hour delays, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). By Wednesday night, however, the delays at JFK had been reduced to between 15 and 30 minutes.

Amtrak reported improvements in travel on Wednesday as well. Services from Chicago and most other locations were departing either on time or close to it. On Tuesday some trips from Chicago had been canceled, leaving nearly 700 stranded passengers at Chicago’s Union Station, who had waits of up to 22 hours, according to a spokesman, Marc Magliari.

www.ohare.com