Hundreds of Friday flights canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth, Love Field amid winter storm
Flight cancellations continue to plague travelers as a winter storm brings a mix of snow, ice and sleet to North Texas.
Over 200 flights scheduled to leave Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and nearly a quarter of flights from Dallas Love Field on Friday were canceled as of Thursday evening.
American Airlines expects winter weather will continue impacting flights on Friday. DFW is the Fort Worth-based carrier’s largest hub.
“Though tomorrow morning’s expected conditions will limit our operation, our entire team is focused on and gearing up to recover our airline quickly once the operating conditions improve,” American said in a statement on Thursday night.
DFW, which is geographically the size of Manhattan, has been treating roads, bridges and runways since early Thursday morning. The airport said it has plenty of deicing fluid in a post on X made on Thursday afternoon, after some social media posts speculated DFW was out of supplies.
“We will be treating 7 runways, 75M sq feet of airfield surface, 1,288 lane miles of roads & 133 bridges using 875 tons of sand, 169,000 gallons of liquid deicer and more than 1,000 tons of other roadway materials with 100 pieces of heavy equipment,” said another post on DFW’s X account.
American Airlines said DFW is continuing to treat runways, though some remain closed due to weather conditions. American said the storm made operating conditions “incredibly difficult” on Thursday.
Sleet and freezing rain on Thursday shortened the window of time deicing fluid is effective, rendering some flights temporarily unable to take off. The airline and its deicing vendor have enough fluid to deice planes for the duration of the winter storm.
“It’s been all-hands-on-deck for the American team — many of whom braved the weather to staff our airports, flights and operations center to take care of our customers and keep our airline moving,” the company said in a statement.
Earlier this week, American issued a travel alert allowing customers affected by the storm to rebook their flights without change fees.
Both DFW and Dallas Love Field airports saw widespread cancellations on Thursday. Airlines scrapped over 800 flights out of DFW, and travelers out of Dallas Love Field dealt with more than 100 cancellations on Thursday, according to FlightAware. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop for all flights heading to DFW from other airports on Thursday afternoon, which lasted into the early evening.
Across its entire U.S. network, American Airlines saw over 20% of its Thursday flights canceled. Meanwhile, Dallas-based Southwest canceled about 9% of its Thursday routes.
This story was originally published January 9, 2025 at 10:17 AM with the headline "Hundreds of Friday flights canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth, Love Field amid winter storm."
