Flight cancellations in the US on Saturday 14 November have passed the forecast that the FAA Administrator, Bryan Bedford, gave that morning. The flight tracking site FlightAware had counted more than 5,000 flights within, into or out of the US cancelled as of 2.48pm ET, the Yahoo News live blog reports.
Fox News, also citing FlightAware, had just over 5,000 cancellations and more than 14,600 delays by 1pm ET. The Albuquerque Journal reports that FlightAware had counted more than 5,700 cancellations nationwide by Saturday afternoon.
Bedford had forecast 4,000 to 5,000 cancellations out of roughly 41,000 flights scheduled for the whole of Saturday. The FlightAware counts already exceed the top of that range, and they were taken before the day was over.
The disruption is also reaching Sunday. ABC News says 160 flights had already been cancelled for Sunday 15 November as of 3.30pm ET.
Bedford told a press conference on Saturday that airlines "believe that they'll be able to have full schedule integrity by the close of business on Sunday", ABC News reports. That matches his earlier expectation of full recovery by the end of Sunday.