US airline passengers hit by more chaos after deadly snowstorm

US airline passengers are facing continued disruption following a deadly blizzard that swept across the country over the Christmas period, with thousands of flights still being cancelled on Tuesday. According to the flight tracking site FlightAware, more than 3,000 US flights had been cancelled by Tuesday evening, and over 5,000 had been delayed. The majority of axed flights were operated by Southwest Airlines, which accounted for 64% of Tuesday’s cancellations, according to FlightAware. Southwest said it would operate just one-third of its flight schedule “for the next several days” due to “continuing challenges impacting our customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable”. On Monday, the US Department of Transportation wrote on Twitter: “USDOT is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays & reports of lack of prompt customer service.” The travel chaos comes in the aftermath of a blizzard that left more than two dozen people dead and thousands without power, in what local officials described as the area’s deadliest snowstorm in decades. States across the US were struck by the storm, with the hardest-hit area being New York’s Erie County, which includes the city of Buffalo, the state’s second-largest city. Speaking on Monday, New York governor Kathy Hochul said visiting the area was like “going to a war zone”. The blizzard, which meteorologists have described as a “bomb cyclone”, denoting a storm that intensifies rapidly, has caused temperatures across the US to plummet to as low as minus 40C over the Christmas period. The national weather service had warned last week that more than 200mn people, or roughly 60% of the US population, were under some form of winter weather warning or advisory.<br/>