Flight Aware<\/a> reported 11 flights were canceled and 31 were delayed Saturday at Jacksonville International Airport, with more cancellations to follow Sunday.<\/p>\nA spokesperson for the airport reported that about 1\/3 of Sunday’s flights were already canceled by Saturday evening, with the number nearing 80.<\/p>\n
One passenger made it through the chaos just in time to say “surprise.”<\/p>\n
“It took them forever to de-ice our plane and the roads were terrible getting there,” said Charity Pippin as she left JAX.<\/p>\n
When Pippin left for the airport in Nashville, the spinning tires all around her had her worried if her plane would get in the air.<\/p>\n
“What usually takes me an hour took me two hours to get there,” said Pippin. “There were wrecks all over the interstate and a lot of flights canceled.”<\/p>\n
However, she had a compelling reason to make it to Jacksonville.<\/p>\n
“It’s my mom’s birthday today and I’m surprising her,” said Pippin.<\/p>\n
Despite the long drive and an hour on the runway to de-ice, Pippin touched down in Jacksonville with enough time to make it to her mom’s party.<\/p>\n
Not everyone was able to complete their trips on time.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, two-hour flight delay,” said Shane Butcher while waiting near TSA.<\/p>\n
Butcher was stuck waiting out a delay to fly back to New Jersey, so he settled in to enjoy Florida’s climate for as long as he could, knowing he’d have a shovel in his hand as soon as he landed.<\/p>\n
“I mean, I have no choice,” said Butcher. “I have a little brother waiting for me back home, and he’s not going to be able to do the work himself tomorrow morning.”<\/p>\n
However, the baggage claim carousels still whirred throughout the evening, as several passengers said they were relieved they got their flights before the delays and cancellations really started to snowball.<\/p>\n
Pippin isn’t too worried if the winter weather impacts her flight home.<\/p>\n
“I’m okay getting stuck in Florida,” said Pippin. “Good place to be stuck.”<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for JAX is recommending passengers check for updates on their Sunday flights before departing for the airport, given the amount that have already been canceled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A spokesperson for Jacksonville International Airport reports that about a third of flights Sunday are canceled due to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-131057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}