Storm blamed for more flight delays and cancellations

Getting home after the Christmas holiday continues to be a predicament as a massive storm that has now hit the Northeast grounded thousands of planes for the third straight day.

As of Thursday morning, more than 800 flights had been canceled and nearly 5,000 more had been delayed, with most of the planes grounded in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Detroit and New Jersey, according to the flight monitoring site Flightstats.com.

Still, the storm’s effect has declined compared to Wednesday, when more than 2,000 flights were canceled and more than 12,000 were delayed as the storm cut a wide swath through the mid-Atlantic states, heading northeast.

Because the storm is now cutting across the nation’s busiest airspace, the ripple effects are being felt even more throughout the country.

At Los Angeles International Airport, the nation’s fifth-busiest, eight arriving flights had been canceled Thursday morning and more than 100 others had been delayed at least 15 minutes, according to Flightstats.com.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning for parts of Maine, New Hampshire, northern Vermont and New York.

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