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Beware, anyone planning to make a last-minute Thanksgiving getaway from D.C.: Wet, blustery weather is already causing delays to stack up at airports across the Northeast.
Bad weather never goes well with a plane ticket, but it’s particularly sour news when it coincides with the busiest travel day of the year — and the Federal Aviation Administration had already estimated that 15 percent more people will fly for this Thanksgiving holiday than did last year.
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The worst headaches so far Wednesday morning are hitting airports around New York City and at Philadelphia International Airport.
According to the FAA, Philadelphia lays claim Wednesday morning to the worst flight delays, with arrivals into the City of Brotherly Love already running about two hours late because of low cloud cover. And at New York’s LaGuardia International Airport, arrivals are delayed about an hour because of winds, which forecasts say could reach up to 40 mph. In Newark, N.J., delays are running at about an hour and 15 minutes.
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JFK International Airport is also starting to show signs of stress, with departure delays of about 15 minutes and increasing, and arrival delays of about 49 minutes.
As goes the New York airspace, so goes the rest of the country — especially considering that delays for the Northeast started practically as soon as the travel day began. As late flights and cancellations begin to mount, they will ripple across the rest of the country, creating a Thanksgiving mess that could take hours — maybe even days — to work itself out.
Airlines are beginning to cancel some flights — according to flight tracking service FlightAware.com, 197 flights have been canceled so far Wednesday, compared with 169 yesterday. Newark, Philadelphia and LaGuardia top the list.
As is typically the case, some airlines — including United and American — have begun waiving their normal rescheduling fees for people who are scheduled to travel later Wednesday but may want to avoid standing around the airport for hours.
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Two of the Washington Metro area’s three airports aren’t showing any significant delays. But departures from Baltimore-Washington International Airport are experiencing delays of about 30 minutes and getting worse, according to the FAA.
But there’s some good news for those flying out of Washington Dulles International Airport: The TSA seems to be on its game Wednesday morning. According to a security line monitoring system the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority operates at Dulles, people are able to breeze through security screening lines in fewer than five minutes — for now.
As for the roads, they’ll be wet: The National Weather Service is predicting rain through about 4 p.m. Wednesday in the D.C. area, followed by a chance of rain and snow. But the skies should begin clearing out Wednesday night, and Thanksgiving Day is expected to be sunny.
