NEW YORK — Thousands of air travelers were out of luck Thursday as snow and wind at major transit hubs forced more than 4,000 flights to be canceled.
The massive winter storm virtually shut down New York’s airports, creating long lines of frustrated flyers and leaving others to sleep at Newark Liberty International Airport.
“We’re delayed and we’re not sure if we’re going to be flying out of here anytime soon,” said Hazel Blackmon, one flier trying to get to Georgia.
At LaGuardia Airport, the snow and wind made runways impassable.
Front-loaders clear snow from the area around Gates C and D outside Terminal B at LaGuardia Airport, Thursday, Jan. 4, 2018, in New York.
Julie Jacobson / AP
“There are no planes leaving or going, so I’m basically stuck here in this airport,” said another traveler.
Boston’s Logan International Airport was a ghost town as nearly 75 percent of flights were canceled.
Still, we found at least one person who braved sub-freezing temperatures Thursday morning to catch a train to the airport in the hopes of finding a flight.
“I think there’s going to be some kind of a delay,” he said. “Our flight already got canceled and moved. We were supposed to leave at 11, got pushed back to 8, hopefully we can get out before the storm comes.”
It’s a good thing that traveler left early, because the scene at New York’s Jamaica train station a few hours later was just brutal.
For traveler Ilanna Raz, she was trying to get back to New York, and instead got stuck in Texas.
“It’s crazy,” Raz said. “They canceled our flight so we really had to scurry to figure out another way to get home but we are in Dallas for a 24-hour bad weather layover. Not that we are missing New York and negative three degrees.”
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