dailynewsnblog
Wednesday marked the peak of an epically bad week at 
New York’s LaGuardia Airport (LGA) as intense storms caused massive schedule disruptions at the busy airfield. To compound the impact of harsh weather, a sinkhole collapsed and shut down one of just two runways, according to CNBC reports.
FlightAware reported more than 400 cancellations on Tuesday and Wednesday combined. The situation has only grown worse with more thunderstorms causing more than 250 cancellations and over 320 delayed flights. The sinkhole was only discovered at 11:00 AM EST, during a routine morning inspection by a team from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Dire Straits For Field Ops At LaGuardia
Runway 4/22 remains closed while these vital safety fixes are finalized. All takeoffs and landings are temporarily restricted to the airport’s single remaining active runway 13/31. With Memorial Day right around the corner, the damage to the runway is an urgent and potentially disastrous concern for their field operations.
The immediate shutdown of the one airstrip significantly decreases capacity at the time. Matters will grow worse should efforts to repair it by the early morning hours of Thursday. While the target is 6:00 AM EST, the Port Authority has not released a binding timeline for when flights will safely resume.
Emergency construction and engineering crews from the Port Authority are working through the night using excavators and other heavy machinery to fix the damage. LaGuardia has advised all travelers to continuously check their flight status directly with their respective carriers before heading to the terminal. The Port Authority gave this remark in a statement, via X:
“The runway was immediately shut down, and emergency construction and engineering crews are on-site to determine the cause and complete necessary repairs as quickly and safely as possible.”
Air And Landside Transit Grinds To A Crawl
Increasing the pressure on LaGuardia was a fire breaking out at the Amtrak train station following the discovery of the sinkhole. The primary regional rail disruption stemmed from a massive, fast-moving brush fire burning right along the railroad tracks and the New Jersey Turnpike in Secaucus. The combined transit crunch couldn’t come at a worse time, with this weekend projected to see record-breaking Memorial Day travel numbers.
Delta Air Lines bore the brunt of the disruptions, accounting for the largest share of flight cancellations with 90 itineraries axed as well as hundreds of delays. American Airlines and JetBlue both had a large number of cancellations as well. Southwest Airlines was lucky to only suffer about 20 delays on a Wednesday, while none of its flights were actually canceled.
The current projection has about 50 flights canceled for Thursday, with the majority being Delta or American Airlines flights. A number of those include slots scheduled for the early morning hours that were impacted by operations on Wednesday. Southwest and United are expected to resume normal ops.
“Please Do Something”: Pilots Have Complained About LaGuardia Airport’s Safety For Years
Pilots at LaGuardia Airport have reported multiple near-miss situations due to unclear instructions from air traffic control.
The Wider Picture: Tough Times In The Big Apple
The problems at LaGuardia aren’t isolated issues. The entire metro aviation system around the region surrounding New York City has been impacted by the severe weather this week. Capacity restrictions and ground delay orders from the Federal Aviation Administration led to significant wait times for inbound and departing planes at both 
New York JFK Airport (JFK) and 
Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR).
The airspace over New York is the most congested in the United States. A disruption at one airport can very often trigger a cascading bottleneck at the others. As air traffic controllers fought to route aircraft around severe storm cells, JFK’s standard arrival corridors over Long Island were heavily restricted. The airport recorded 184 delays and 61 cancellations this week, according to Travel and Tour World.
Earlier this week, Newark was ordered by the FAA to reduce its hourly flight capacity from 77 takeoffs and landings to 56. The decision was made due to a shortage of air traffic controllers, presenting a higher risk under bad weather, while EWR also has higher than normal congestion due to a runway closure. The capacity reduction is expected to last three weeks at Newark, according to NJ Spotlight News.
