CHARLOTTE, N.C. — While the Carolinas slowly sunk Sunday under snow and ice, Charlotte Douglas International Airport was a sea of red — red as in hundreds of canceled flights stretching into Monday.
The airline hub, one of the busiest in the country, was also the hardest hit by a powerful winter storm that swept across the South starting before dawn.
As of 10:30 a.m., 1,132 flights had been canceled, leaving only a handful still on the board, some with delays, according to the tracking site, FlightAware.com. CLT airport is American Airlines’ second-largest hub.
At least 92 flights scheduled for Monday have been canceled.
With freezing rain expected to lead to dangerous accumulations of ice across the Charlotte area throughout the day, conditions at CLT were only expected to worsen — and the list of cancellations to grow.
The Federal Aviation Administration warned that flights in and out of the city could end later Sunday by 11 p.m.
“CLT is expecting extreme freezing rain issues, and almost all flights have been canceled going to that destination. ... Ground stop possible.”
The airline travel problems posed by the storm were widespread and growing.
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, the main hub for Delta Air Lines, canceled more than 300 flights, The Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, possible ground stops already extended as far north as Washington, D.C., the FAA said in its air traffic control plan for Sunday.
While snow and other frozen precipitation fell across the Carolinas and the South, Charlotte was in the crosshairs Sunday for the worst of the icing, with a dangerous .35 of an inch expected to accumulate.
Temperatures were expected to remain below freezing most of the day before dropping into the low 20s overnight, prolonging the icing well past Monday morning.
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(Charlotte Observer news editor Rogelio Aranda contributed to this report.)
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