Topline
Airports in Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando and Dallas were the main trouble spots Friday afternoon as thunderstorms, from Texas to Florida and Georgia, snarled air traffic and caused thousands of flight delays.
Thunderstorms across the South and Southeast disrupted thousands of flights Friday.
As of 2:40 p.m. EDT Friday, over 3,100 flights were delayed in and out of U.S. airports, according to FlightAware.
U.S. airports with triple-digit delayed departures by early afternoon Friday included Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, Charlotte Douglas, Orlando and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Delays impacted more than 21% of flights departing Charlotte and 26% of flights departing Orlando.
The FAA issued a ground stop at Atlanta for roughly two hours this afternoon.
Boston Logan was under a ground delay for more than four hours due to runway construction.
Early afternoon Friday, the FAA’s National Airspace System dashboard listed “possible” ground stops or delays at 18 airports and “probable” ground stops or delays for five airports, including Reagan National in Washington, D.C.—signaling potentially increasing snarls throughout the afternoon and into evening.
The National Weather Service forecast for Friday includes scattered thunderstorms across the Deep South before pushing off the Gulf Coast. From the Mid-Atlantic southward into the Southeast, “lines of thunderstorms” could bring severe weather on Friday afternoon and into night. Meanwhile, expect moderate to heavy rain with “increasingly gusty wind” across the Ohio Valley and into the northern Mid-Atlantic by tonight.
45,000. That’s how many flights the FAA manages in U.S. airspace every day, on average. Friday’s 3,100 flight delays represent roughly 7% of all flights for the day.
The number of scheduled flights this summer are up 4% compared to last year, according to the FAA. On some days over the coming summer, the FAA will oversee nearly 50,000 flights.
Summer heat and storms in one region of the country can quickly turn into a national air travel problem. The FAA often slows traffic flow at impacted airports with temporary ground delays and, sometimes, ground stops. That often causes a domino effect, as planes scheduled to fly out of impacted airports later in the day get further delayed. On bad-weather days, flight delays tend to peak in late afternoon and early evening.
Over 4,500 Flights Delayed Tuesday Due To Fog In Denver, Storms In Southeast (Forbes)