Worst Day Of Winter For Airlines And Passengers

The Airlines Are Really Over All This Snow
An airline traveler is seen walking away from the flight status screen full of 'Cancelled' notices at Dulles International Airport (IAD), Virginia near Washington, DC February 13, 2014. On Thursday, over a hundred flights were cancelled at Dulles International Airport which typically has 750 flights on a normal day. Specialty website FlightAware said airlines canceled at least 3,700 flights on February 12th and had already shelved 5,500 for Thursday, including many flights to and from New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington. The latest brutal freeze to hammer the eastern states of the country since the start of the year has been dubbed 'snowmaggedon,' 'mind-boggling' and 'historic' by major television networks and forecasters. AFP PHOTO/Paul J. Richards (Photo credit should read PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)
An airline traveler is seen walking away from the flight status screen full of 'Cancelled' notices at Dulles International Airport (IAD), Virginia near Washington, DC February 13, 2014. On Thursday, over a hundred flights were cancelled at Dulles International Airport which typically has 750 flights on a normal day. Specialty website FlightAware said airlines canceled at least 3,700 flights on February 12th and had already shelved 5,500 for Thursday, including many flights to and from New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington. The latest brutal freeze to hammer the eastern states of the country since the start of the year has been dubbed 'snowmaggedon,' 'mind-boggling' and 'historic' by major television networks and forecasters. AFP PHOTO/Paul J. Richards (Photo credit should read PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

Thursday is shaping up to be the worst day of a very bad winter for U.S. airlines and their passengers.

More than 5,800 flights were canceled on Thursday alone, as a storm battered the East Coast.

There have been 73,000 U.S. flights canceled so far in 2014 due to a series of winter storms, according to flight tracking service masFlight.

Airline experts say that this year's rash of flight cancellations is the worst to hit the industry since the entire U.S. airspace was completely shut down for four days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

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