'It's a little stressful': Winter weather continues to delay flights at RDU ahead of holiday
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- Snow, freezing rain and strong winds impacted flights again nationwide as Friday's flight cancellations topped 5,000, according to FlightAware.
'Hoping for the best': More delays than cancellations at RDU amid winter storm across U.S.
"There's so many impacts right now with snow, freezing rain and strong winds, so we're particularly seeing right now Denver impacted, and Chicago," FlightAware spokeswoman Kathleen Bangs said. "Right now in the New York area we're seeing a third of all flights getting canceled."
Holiday travelers such as Brett Carter dodged the travel headache on Friday at Raleigh-Durham International Airport with a ticket to New York in his hand.
"I was initially concerned because I knew that when I looked at the news this morning and I saw they were having a lot of cancellations, I thought, 'may not be able to make our flight', so I've been checking all day so far, things are back on track for us at least," Carter said before getting through TSA. "I'm excited, I'm going to visit my in-laws, so just looking forward to having the opportunity to spend time with family."
Nearly 200 flights were delayed and at least 40 were canceled at RDU on Friday, according to FlightAware. This comes as a cold front pushing across North Carolina knocked out power to more than 200,000 utility customers earlier.
"We had a lot of downed trees and roads and things that had to be cleared, so it's been a busy day," Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks said. "We did make significant progress today and reduce those outages by almost 60% from where they were more than this morning."
In destinations such as Minneapolis where the winter weather is more extreme, people like Marissa Varney hoped to make it home on Friday.
"We're on track for now, but having some issues with some other folks," Varney said about the rest of her party headed to Chicago. "I think it's a little stressful. I think anybody would probably be stressed, so we've been keeping an eye on everything throughout the week. This is kind of the worst case scenario, but they're moving through it."
RDU expects Sunday, Dec. 25 to be the slowest day with more than 24,000 passengers.
