With the holiday travel season upon us, there’s little you can do if you’re flight is canceled. But if you have yet to buy a plane ticket, you can always consider another mode of transportation. Here are five airports you want to avoid this winter.
5. Boston, MA: The center of the northeast is subject to severe storms during the winter. Why? Ever heard of a storm called a nor’easter? When Arctic winds carrying snow blow down the coast of Canada, Boston is directly on the route. Logan is the windiest U.S. Airport and is in the top 5 U.S. major cities for snowfall. Cancellations are rare, but delays, inevitable.
4. Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN: Snow. Snow. And more snow. Luckily, however, staff is used to it, and so the airport rarely shuts down.
3. Detroit, MI: This city has extreme winter weather. Plus, only Seattle has more days of annual precipitation. But four parallel runways make landing and clearing easier.
2. NYC Airports – JFK, LGA and Newark had more than 100 million passengers last year. While almost a third of the country’s winter delays stem from problems in the New York area, you could argue that this should be number one. But the airport with the worst weather goes to…
1. Chicago, IL: Obvi. Although its climate is like Detroit’s, this mid-western hub get way more traffic. And it’s not just due to snow that makes this city’s airport avoidable – it’s the wind. After a major storm, it can take a day to clear up the runways of cancelled flights.
Hope you don’t have any layovers, and if you’re flying to or from these airports, that there aren’t any major weather systems. Good luck this winter season, travelers.