WASHINGTON -- A line of thunderstorms that stretched from Florida to New York caused flight delays exceeding six hours in some cases at major airports in the Northeast on Friday, federal aviation officials said.
The storm system cutting through the eastern third of the nation with heavy rain and 50 mph winds in some spots held up flights into and out of the region including some from the West Coast.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that average delays were 3-1/2 hours at Boston's Logan International Airport, four hours at Newark International Airport, and 4-1/2 hours at New York's LaGuardia Airport. However, delays for some flights scheduled to arrive at those airports exceeded six hours, the FAA said.
Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Washington-area airports also were affected at different times of the day, but delays were less severe.
"This has been a very bad day if you are going to and from the Northeast," an FAA spokesman said.
The storms represented the classic summertime weather scenario that the FAA has been preparing to address with new delay-fighting strategies.
These include holding teleconferences throughout the day between air traffic planners and the airlines to map out operations that would maximize capacity.
The National Weather Service said the slow-moving system was no surprise, but it was still difficult to predict where the worst spots would be.
Aviation experts, even the fiercest FAA critics, acknowledge that with some storms there is little or no chance of minimizing delay.
Weather accounts for most airline flight delays. There were 30,260 flight delays system-wide in April, according to the latest FAA statistics. More than 21,000 were blamed on weather-related problems.
