Nearly 1,000 flights have been cancelled at the world’s busiest airport in recent days, as heavy storms hit Atlanta ahead of the Fourth of July travel surge.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport saw 402 cancellations on Friday and 515 on Saturday, and has posted 72 cancellations on Sunday as of 9:30 pm local time. More than 1,000 flights were delayed at the airport on Saturday alone.
A majority of cancellations were from Delta Air Lines, which uses Hartsfield-Jackson as its primary hub. “Severe weather in Atlanta on the evening of [27 June] brought intense thunderstorms, hail, windshear and reports of microburst winds — causing significant disruption to Delta’s largest hub where around 900 of our flights flow each day,” according to Delta Chief Customer Experience Officer Erik Snell.
“The storm caused hundreds of cancellations, diversions and delays across our entire system as well as an evacuation and temporary power loss at the ATL [Atlanta] air traffic control tower.”
Delta’s operations in Atlanta stabilised on Sunday, with cancellation numbers dropping below 60, the airline wrote. “No further disruption from Friday’s severe weather is expected.”
A record 72.2 million Americans will travel domestically during the week of the Fourth of July holiday, the American Automobile Association has estimated.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport expects to host more than 4 million passengers between 26 June and 7 July, the airport wrote last week. It had projected 27 June to be the busiest day of the period, with 394,576 travellers.
Hartsfield-Jackson Airport is the world’s busiest by passenger numbers, with passengers increasing by 3.3% to reach more than 108 million passengers in 2024. According to the airport, it includes an annual direct economic impact of US$66 billion in the state of Georgia.
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