Delta, other airlines urge travel changes to avoid winter storm disruption

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional information from the airlines.

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, as well as Frontier, Southwest and American, are offering extensive travel flexibility for cities across the South and Southeast — including Atlanta — for travel this weekend ahead of the impending winter storm.

Delta, Frontier and Southwest are offering flexibility for travel between Friday and Monday. American is offering waivers for flights between Friday and Tuesday. All of the airlines are offering changes without fees.

Delta sent out messages to all customers with travel plans involving Atlanta on Sunday to consider changing their flights because of forecasted ice accumulation and expected cancellations.

The Atlanta-based airline announced it had begun preemptively canceling flights in North Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee.

As of Friday morning, United Airlines had not included Atlanta in its list of affected locations.

An ice storm warning has been issued for northeast Georgia for the first time in over a decade as the state braces for treacherous winter weather arriving this weekend.

The warning will go into effect at 1 p.m. Saturday as Gulf Coast rain collides with Arctic cold. The warning overlaps a winter storm watch, which goes into effect at 1 a.m. the same day, that covers metro Atlanta and all of North Georgia, stretching southeast to just north and east of Macon. Both expire at 10 a.m. Monday.

Forecasts predict “impactful winter weather including freezing rain, sleet and ice accumulation across Texas, the Southeast, including Delta’s Atlanta hub, and into the Northeast over the next several days,” Delta said in a statement earlier this week.

Delta and its partners represent about 80% of flights at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. It has more than two dozen staff meteorologists supporting its Atlanta Operations and Customer Center around the clock.

— Rosana Hughes of the AJC contributed to this report.