On early Christmas Eve, dense fog caused chaos for travelers within O’Hare and Midway International Airports in Chicago, resulting in over 50 planes being canceled and leaving travelers stranded for the holidays.
The whole Chicago region was under a severe fog advisory on Sunday from the National Weather Service. It was supposed to stop at 9 a.m., but because of the persistent heavy fog, it was later extended until noon.
Around fifty cancellations have occurred at Midway alone thus far, and delays are growing as a result of the FAA imposing a ground halt until 10:30 a.m. following the cancellation of travel late on Saturday night.
In the meantime, O’Hare Airport has only recorded 15 delayed and canceled flights.
A Southwest Airlines representative told Fox News Digital that the airline was coordinating with travelers and striving to find a solution.
Fog at Chicago Midway started on Saturday night and hindered inbound planes from landing, resulting in some diversions and subsequent flight cancellations. We are assisting our customers whose travel is affected by this. We’ve changed our scheduled start time for this Sunday at Chicago Midway since visibility stayed below the necessary operational minimums throughout the night and into this morning.” said Southwest Airlines. “We have all hands on deck as our employees are working to quickly take care of our customers and accommodate them on alternative flights.”
Over 200 daily departures are scheduled for the holiday weekend out of Chicago Midway, which is Southwest Airlines’ fourth busiest airport.
The fog at Midway has caused us to cancel about 70 flights for Sunday (less than 1% of the 4242 flights we have scheduled overall). The majority of these cancellations are morning departures from Midway. Although we are currently running the rest of our schedule, as our operation recovers, we still see cancellations and delays,” stated Southwest.
In addition to weather-related delays, someone on X, the original name of Twitter, reported that early on Christmas Eve, pro-Palestinian demonstrators had blocked the entrance to O’Hare Airport.