David Goldman / AP
Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016 | 2:33 p.m.
Hurricane Matthew may be on the other side of the country, but that doesn’t mean Las Vegas isn’t being affected.
Airlines canceled hundreds of flights today and Friday as the hurricane pelted the Florida coast with high winds and heavy rain. The Fort Lauderdale airport shut down this morning, and farther north the Orlando airport expected to do the same by nighttime.
Before 2 p.m. Eastern time, flight-tracking service FlightAware.com reported that 1,500 Thursday flights within the U.S. had been scrapped. The problems have cascaded to McCarran International Airport. At noon Thursday, McCarran’s website listed five flights arriving from Florida and eight flights departing to Florida as canceled.
And on Friday, there will likely be more cancellations as the storm progresses. Southwest Airlines said it plans to cancel 130 of its flights around the U.S. on Friday because of the storm.
Just before noon Thursday, the National Weather Service said the Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds near 140 mph, was strengthening while heading northwest and could be over the Florida coast early Friday morning.
Christine Crews, public information administrator at McCarran, said that while the airport's website lists delays as well as the cancellations, it’s difficult to know if the delays were caused by the storm, or by other unrelated issues.
“We advise people flying to monitor the flight status through their air carrier because they’ll have the most up-to-date status for your particular flight,” Crews said. “Even if you are not traveling to a part of the country affected by the weather conditions, if your flight was scheduled to travel through that area, there could be a ripple effect due to the weather event.”
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