Hurricane Idalia creates travel chaos across the US as hundreds of flights cancelled

Hurricane Idalia has impacted flight travel across the nation with several airports have been closed and hundreds of flights cancelled or delayed as the storm made landfall in Florida on Wednesday. Some Florida airports – Tampa, St. Pete-Clearwater, Sarasota and Tallahassee – were closed for the day ‘in preparation for Hurricane Idalia,’ the Federal Aviation Authority wrote on X. Airports in Gainesville and Boca Raton are also closed, while Miami’s airport is experiencing a ground stop. Across the board so far there have been 1,341 delayed flights and 907 cancelled flights, which were flying within, into or out of the US, on Wednesday, according to FlightAware. Those numbers appear to be increasing by the minute. Southwest Airlines, as of Wednesday morning, was experiencing the heaviest delays, according to flight tracking website FlightAware , followed by Delta. As of Wednesday morning, other airports across the country were also experiencing closures, including Boston Logan Airport, Harry Reid International Airport and Worcester Regional Airport, according to the FAA . Philadelphia’s airport as well as New York’s airports – JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia – are also experiencing delays. On Wednesday morning, Hurricane Idalia made landfall as a Category-3 storm , bringing ‘catastrophic storm surge’ and torrential rain to parts of Florida. While the hurricane hit the Big Bend area with 125mph winds earlier this morning, the National Hurricane Center said the storm is now reaching southern Georgia with ‘ damaging winds .’ Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted , ‘The State Emergency Response Team stands ready to deploy search & rescue and power crews to impacted areas as soon as it is safe to do so.’ He also announced that Uber is offering free rides to take Floridians to emergency shelters in counties that are in the path of the hurricane.