US: Airlines waive change fees, cancel flights

Air travellers faced a slow start to the work week thanks to the latest winter storm to disrupt flights. Most big airlines were waiving rebooking fees for the storm, which was affecting flights in the Midwest Monday. Nationwide, more than 800 flights had been cancelled and another 2,000 delayed as of 5:50 p.m. ET, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. Those tallies had been growing since early morning as the storm pushed east Monday. Nearly 500 of those cancellations came at Minneapolis/St. Paul, easily the hardest hit airport on Monday. That accounted about 40% of the entire day’s schedule at the airport, a major hub for Delta. Chicago’s Midway Airport – a busy hub for Southwest – had nearly 50 cancellations. FlightAware showed most were on departing flights, with about 10% of Monday’s departures axed. At Chicago O'Hare, United was waiving rebooking fees for flights at its busy hub there, though disruptions were mostly minor. Delays were more of a problem than cancellations for fliers there. Disruptions were also being reported Monday at a number of smaller airports across the upper Midwest. Most big airlines had instituted flexible rebooking policies for flights at a number of airports across the upper Midwest and Great Lakes. <br/>