This week: U.S. East Coast winter wonderland & more

Let’s get straight into it – here are our airport headlines from this week in the overview:

Two massive weather events impacted the people in the Northern Hemisphere this week. The first one took place in the United States East Coast earlier in the week. The Huffington Post wrote that its winds howling at more than 70 mph (113 km/h), the Blizzard of 2015 slammed Boston and surrounding parts of New England on Tuesday with none of the mercy it unexpectedly showed New York City, piling up more than 2 feet of snow (61 cm). Much of the Northeast — particularly the Philadelphia-to-Boston corridor of more than 35 million people — had braced for a debilitating blast Monday evening and into Tuesday after forecasters warned of a storm of potentially historic proportions, the article continued. The Denver Post also reported that airlines have proactively cancelled more than 6,100 flights into East Coast airports, including New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and Quebec.

And before we move to the other weather event, we found this news here on Thursday, when ABC News reported that a United Airlines flight bound for Washington, D.C. from Los Angeles made an emergency landing at Ontario International Airport (ONT) on Thursday. A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said Flight 1181 from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Dulles International Airport (IAD) landed “without incident” in Ontario. And whilst, according to the article, the airline did not immediately specify what triggered the emergency landing, passengers took to social media, saying smoke in the cabin forced the landing. A witness captured video of firefighters dousing the plane’s engine shortly after it landed safely on the runway. All 199 passengers including seven crew members were evacuated safely.

Now back to the second weather story this week: This time it affected the United Kingdom. The Independent wrote on Thursday that all flights in and out of Manchester Airport (MAN) were suspended following heavy snow. The airport reopened shortly before 2pm but passengers were warned to expect further delays. Flights were also suspended at East Midlands Airport (EMA) near Nottingham, after a bout of heavy snowfall.

That’s all for this week – safe travels!

[Photo from Bejamin Bezine via Flickr – some rights reserved]