Delta Air Lines’ reputation for reliability took another hit over the weekend as severe winter weather brought operations at its key New York hubs to a near standstill, triggering a Federal Aviation Administration ground stop and widespread flight cancellations.
The disruption capped off a turbulent few weeks for Delta, which has recently dealt with multiple operational setbacks, including ground stops and a network-wide outage that caused mass cancellations at Detroit Metro Airport earlier this month. As the airline tries to steady operations ahead of the busy holiday travel season, the weekend delivered mixed results.
Saturday showed signs of improvement. Delta limited delays to about 19% of its flights, outperforming major competitors such as Southwest, American, and United. But the momentum didn’t last.
By Sunday, stormy winter conditions in the Northeast reversed those gains. Snow and ice across the New York City area forced the FAA to issue ground stops at LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport starting at 8 a.m., effectively freezing inbound traffic and cascading delays across the national airspace system.
In its advisory, the FAA said the weather-related ground stop caused arriving flights to be delayed by an average of three hours and 16 minutes, with some pushed back nearly five hours. The impact was felt nationwide, with 9,565 flight delays recorded across the U.S. on Sunday — the highest total so far this month.
LaGuardia emerged as the hardest-hit airport globally. The airport logged 226 canceled departures and 205 canceled arrivals. Nearly half of all remaining flights were delayed, with 42% of departures and arrivals running behind schedule.
Conditions at JFK were nearly as bad. More than half of the airport’s scheduled departures were delayed, totaling 363 delayed flights. Cancellations piled up as well, with 150 departing flights and 123 arriving flights called off.
For Delta, the fallout was significant. As the dominant carrier at both New York airports — holding roughly 41% of the market share at LaGuardia and leading JFK by passenger volume — the airline absorbed a disproportionate share of the disruption. On Sunday alone, Delta experienced 1,017 delays and more than 200 canceled flights systemwide.
The weekend underscored how vulnerable even the most operationally disciplined airlines remain to weather-related disruptions, particularly at congested hub airports like New York. For Delta and its passengers, it was a reminder that despite efforts to optimize performance, the road to a smooth holiday travel season is far from guaranteed.