It’s been a rough holiday weekend for air travel. Airlines have canceled more than 4,535 flights in the US since Friday, with disruptions now extending into Tuesday. The culprit has been a potent winter storm that’s brought heavy snow, rain and strong winds to airports from the Great Plains and Midwest into the Northeast and New England. Sunday, more than 1,630 flights had been canceled nationwide and another 3,000 delayed as of 6 pm. By far the hardest-hit airport Sunday was Boston, where about 540 combined arrivals and cancellations had been canceled. The majority of those cancellations also had been made pre-emptively by Saturday. Looking ahead to Monday, more than 110 flights had already been canceled. <br/>
general
The partial govt shutdown — the longest ever — has thinned the ranks of federal workers who staff airport security lines. And some travellers had braced for the worst. The scene at most of the nation's airports has so far been marked more by concerned passengers showing up early than by missed flights. Longer lines are evident at some airports. But delays resulting from a rise in federal security screeners calling in sick have been slight. Yet concern is quickly growing. President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress remain far apart over Trump's insistence on funding for a wall along the Mexican border as the price of reopening the govt. With the two sides avoiding talks, travel industry analysts and economists have been calculating the potential damage should the shutdown drag into February or beyond. <br/>
The aviation industry has warned the EU that its proposed regulation to ensure aeroplanes keep flying after a no-deal Brexit represents “a huge step backwards for all European consumers”. The criticism by IATA DG Alexandre de Juniac was in a letter to Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, responding to Brussels’ plan to cap flight numbers between the UK and EU at 2018 levels. Airports Council International has suggested that the cap could lead to the loss of 140,000 new flights and nearly 20m passengers between the UK and EU this year. “Both EU and UK airlines have been allocated airport slots and have sold tickets for this summer. This decision, if approved, will create significant disruption with travellers being unable to fly and airlines unable to honour booked tickets," de Juniac wrote. <br/>
Jordan protested the opening of a new international airport just kilometers away from its border with Israel, local media reported Sunday. The Jordanian govt has expressed concerns about the Ramon international airport as early as 2015. The Kingdom's official opinion is that the airport will violate its air sovereignty, simply by being so close to its border - the air strip is only 18 kilometers inside Israeli territory. Govt officials talking in parliament in April 2018 said they were still convinced that "Israel was doing something illegal" but that the Israeli govt had chosen to ignore Jordan's concerns. Jordan had now lodged an official objection with international authorities. It wasn’t known what the effects of this complaint would be, with nobody in Israel doubting that the airport's inauguration, set for Jan 22nd, would go ahead. <br/>