A deadly winter storm that hit a large swath of the United States wreaked havoc today at several airports, with passengers arriving in New York complaining of being stranded on the tarmac for hours.
A "bomb cyclone" that raked the northeastern part of the country with heavy snowfall, glacial temperatures and high winds had forced the cancellation earlier in the week of thousands of flights, and caused thousands more delays.
Although flights had resumed at New York's John F. Kennedy airport, passengers on Air China 989 from Beijing were forced to wait seven hours to deplane, flight tracking site Flightradar24 tweeted.
"But there are more new flights that landed at JFK this morning, parked with passengers waiting to deplane," the website said.
Two flights headed to New York - OS87 from Vienna and LH400 from Frankfurt - had to turn back due to the "current capacity limit at JFK," Flightradar24 said.
Free at last! After a 14-hour flight from Beijing, and another 7-hours stranded on the @JFKairport TarMac, passengers aboard @airchina Flight #CA989 are deplaning. The next concern is lengthy customs lines. Our flight was just one of many that landed, but without a gate assigned pic.twitter.com/hzO1iUSPx0
— missmonet (@jennimonet) January 6, 2018
In addition to irate passengers, jets from China Southern Airlines and Kuwait Airways clipped each other near JFK's Terminal Four amid the chaos, local media reported.
No one was hurt but both planes were damaged and pulled from service.
The airport in Charleston, South Carolina, unequipped to deal with the 12.7cms (five inches) of snow and ice it received, saw 64% of its outgoing flights cancelled today, FlightAware said.
The extreme storm saw wind chill warnings in parts of the midwest and northeastern US, with authorities warning that frigid blasts of air could feel as cold as -43C, with a risk of frostbite to exposed skin within 10 minutes.
At least 19 people in states from Texas to Wisconsin have died due to the severe weather, US media reported.
