NEW YORK — Strong storms made traveling to Memorial Day difficult for people flying to and from the New York City area after a long weekend.
Delays at LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark airports were one to three hours on Monday.
The problems persisted even after the sky cleared. Most of the delays at the three airports occurred at least an hour late on Monday evening.
Numerous flights delayed in New York and New Jersey
The flight board at LaGuardia showed a few cancellations, but virtually every other flight was delayed once the afternoon storms passed.
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Eventually some of the pilots returned home.
“We operated connecting flights and they were delayed about an hour and a half,” said Nicole Coaxum of Yonkers.
“We had a bit of a delay due to weather, but I was warned in advance yesterday, so I could have transferred if I wanted to,” said Barbara Kingsborough of Mount Kisco.
It didn’t help that more people chose to fly this Memorial Day weekend. TSA set a record for the number of travelers screened in one day on Friday.
According to AAA, 3.5 million Americans flew somewhere over the holiday weekend, a 5% increase from last year and more than 9% since 2019.
AAA estimated that 2.5 million New Yorkers drove to and from their destinations, the most in more than two decades.
The family’s flight from Alabama to NYC took almost 4 hours
Melanie Cade has finally arrived in New York for a family trip from Alabama.
“We love New York, we absolutely love New York. I can’t wait to eat a street hot dog,” said Cade.
Cade, a mother of nine and creator of “Raising Cades” on TikTok, said the journey has been anything but easy.
“It was the most horrible flight I’ve ever had. We’ve flown to New York a few times, but it took us a two hour flight because they went around the weather, it took us about three, almost takes four hours to get here,” she said.
The family may have been delayed, but they are not defeated.
“We’re going to Times Square, of course. We’ll probably catch a show on Broadway. I think the ‘Lion King’ is calling us,” Cade said.
Start of the summer travel wave
The Memorial Day weekend travel increase at airports was just the beginning.
AAA expects U.S. airlines to carry approximately 271 million passengers this summer, up more than 6% from last year.
