Icy cold weather hits mid- and eastern U.S. What are ripple effects in Fresno?
Airline passengers trying to get from Chicago to Fresno on Monday, at the end of the Veterans Day weekend, aren’t going anywhere soon as the lone daily nonstop flight between the two cities was canceled by icy weather that has blasted much of the eastern U.S.
United Airlines reported that flight UA 555, typically a nonstop flight of 4 hours 34 minutes from O’Hare International Airport to Fresno Yosemite International, was scheduled to leave Chicago at 7:35 p.m. Central time (5:35 p.m. Pacific). On Monday afternoon, the airline’s website advised passengers that extreme cold had pushed that departure to 10:30 p.m. Central, or 8:30 Pacific. The regularly scheduled arrival time of 10:21 p.m. in Fresno was originally pushed back to just after 1 a.m. Tuesday.
By mid-afternoon, however, the airline updated its website to declare the flight canceled “because of schedule disruptions caused by snow and ice in the Chicago area.”
The Associated Press reported that more than 950 flights were canceled at Chicago’s airports after as much as six inches of snow fell by midday Monday. One flight arriving Monday morning at O’Hare slid off a runway after landing, but none of the passengers or crew aboard that aircraft were hurt.
The particular Boeing 737-800 jet that was to fly to Fresno experienced schedule delays throughout the day Monday, starting with its departure from Las Vegas shortly after 8:30 a.m., about 1 hour 45 minutes late. The same airplane was expected to be more than four hours late leaving Chicago for Toronto, Canada, which was also getting hit by cold weather.
The jet’s return flight from Toronto to Chicago — its last segment before the canceled Fresno flight — was still on United’s schedule as of Monday afternoon, with its departure pushed back 3 hours and 20 minutes to 9 p.m. Central time.
United’s nonstop Fresno-Chicago service launched last year as a seasonal daily flight. In 2019, it was originally scheduled to run from April through September, but the airline announced this fall that it would be a year-round service continuing through at least 2020. Rather than contracting with Utah-based SkyWest Airlines as it does with many of its Fresno flights, United is using its own mainline fleet for the Chicago-Fresno route.
