The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a ground stop Sunday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Love Field as severe storms swept across North and Central Texas, then followed it with a ground delay that lasted most of the evening. The weather brought 74 mph winds, the threat of 2-inch hail and the possibility of flash flooding, and the disruption rippled through one of the country’s busiest air travel hubs.
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport disrupted over 1,000 flights on Sunday, including 273 departures canceled and 227 arrivals canceled, with 448 delays. American Airlines, which uses DFW as its main hub, had 231 cancellations, about 6% of its volume, and 1,028 delays. By Monday morning, the airline still had 87 flight cancellations and 53 delays, while the cancellation count for departing flights at DFW stood at 29 and its worldwide total from the airport reached 77.
The scale of the breakdown was not confined to Texas. FlightAware showed 666 cancellations within, into or out of the United States on Sunday and 5,635 delays, underscoring how quickly the storm system spread into the national network. American also posted travel alerts on Sunday for flights to, through and from DFW and offered flexible rebooking options, saying new travel had to be booked the same day to qualify. The airline later removed that offer from its website, and it was no longer valid as of May 11.
That timing exposed the pressure on passengers trying to move after the worst of the weather had passed. The rebooking help was advertised on May 10 and withdrawn by May 11, even as cancellations spilled into Monday and American worked to restore its system at DFW. United Airlines had the second-most canceled flights Monday, with 10, but the biggest burden remained on American and on travelers trying to reach, leave or connect through Dallas-Fort Worth. For many of them, the answer to Sunday’s grounding was not a quick reset but a second day of disruption.
