A wave of cancelled flights is moving north to New York and Boston as the first major winter storm of 2018 threatens to paralyze cities and airports over the next couple of days. Airlines have scrapped more than 2,100 Thursday flights so far on top of 558 Wednesday, according to FlightAware, an online tracking service. The winter blast is expected to bring snow, ice and freezing temperatures from Florida to Nova Scotia. “It’s going to be a very challenging day tomorrow in the Northeast due to heavy snows in some areas and strong winds,” said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for American Airlines. “We’re making some proactive cancellations today because we know we’ll be forced to cancel some flights tomorrow.” American Airlines has grounded all departures from Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday, along with all flights by its regional airline partners at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. That includes its LaGuardia shuttle operations to Boston and Ronald Reagan Washington National. Delta scrubbed more than 400 flights Wednesday night and Thursday, as did JetBlue, including 260 at Boston on Thursday. United Continental is grounding some flights at its hub in Newark, New Jersey, and also in Boston. Southwest cancelled 30 flights Wednesday night and nearly 300 Thursday. Smaller cities to the south also are affected, with Delta suspending daytime flights Wednesday at Myrtle Beach and Charleston, South Carolina, and until midday Thursday at Savannah and Brunswick, Georgia. American has nixed all flights from Bradley International near Hartford, Connecticut, on Thursday.<br/>
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Passengers at Mumbai airport were stranded for hours on Wednesday after street protests over the treatment of people in lower castes restricted highway access to the facility and disrupted public transportation across India’s financial hub. Thirty-two flights to and from Mumbai were cancelled Wednesday, according to a spokesperson for the airport, which is run by a consortium led by GVK Power & Infrastructure Ltd. Aircraft tracking website Flightradar24.com counted at least 366 delays of 15 minutes or more. The demonstrations died down in the afternoon, according to local reports. During the disruption, travellers landing at the airport opted to stay inside the terminal rather than venture out, and flight crews were reaching the airport late, said the spokesperson. Passengers with a connecting flight were being transferred through the air-side instead of a regular transfer via terminals, the spokesperson said. The protests began after a man was killed in the neighboring city of Pune on Monday, in a violent clash between members of the Dalit community, the lowest in India’s rigid caste hierarchy, and so-called upper-caste groups. Dalit groups have since organized street protests in various cities across the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital.<br/>
A storm disrupted air traffic at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on Wednesday, with many flights cancelled or delayed. Airlines cancelled 176 out of a total of more than 1,200 incoming and outgoing flights on Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the Dutch national airport said. That number was expected to rise, as the storm would grow stronger during the day, with wind gusts reaching speeds of up to 120 kph. Flights that were not cancelled faced an average delay of about an hour, the airport said.<br/>
Zimbabwe has invited bids for stakes in up to eight loss-making state-owned enterprises, including its national airline and power utility, to help plug a ballooning budget deficit, its deputy finance minister said on Wednesday. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took over from Robert Mugabe two months ago, is under pressure to deliver on his promises to ease spending pressures on the budget and revitalise the economy, which collapsed especially after violent and chaotic seizures of white-owned commercial farms in early 2000s. “We are diluting our shareholding in those entities and our shareholding might go to zero percent in some entities,” Terence Mukupe said. National airline Air Zimbabwe, which runs four aircraft, is sitting on a more than $300m debt pile.<br/>
Canada’s Bombardier Inc delivered 17 CSeries jets in 2017, missing its latest target of 20 to 22 planes, but is confident it can achieve its 2018 target of 40 deliveries, a company spokeswoman said on Wednesday, after engine delays hampered its ability to deliver orders last year. More details on Bombardier’s 2017 deliveries will be disclosed when the company announces its financial results in February, a spokeswoman said. The 110-to-130 seat CSeries jets sell for between $79.5m and $89.5m based on list prices. Bombardier in November cut its CSeries delivery guidance by about a third, from 30 planes to a range of 20 to 22, citing delays from engine supplier Pratt & Whitney.<br/>