One of the busiest airports in the US reopened on Monday afternoon after completely closing for more than half a day due to a fatal accident. New York City’s LaGuardia International Airport (LGA) began reopening to passengers and restarting flights Monday, March 23, at 2 p.m.
The airport located in Queens had a ground stop in place starting early Monday morning after a fatal accident involving a high-speed collision between a landing plane and a fire truck on one of its runways late on Sunday night. The ground stop was scheduled to expire at 2 p.m., and when it did, officials opened one runway for departing flights.
A ground delay program for arriving flights was scheduled from 4 p.m. on Monday until early morning on Tuesday March 24, according to an alert on the National Airspace System Status site. Arriving flights were seeing delays of nearly three hours, the alert said.
LaGuardia’s hours-long ground stop caused hundreds of flight delays and cancellations across the country. There were a total of 3,206 flight delays across the US as of 2:30 p.m. on Monday, according to data from FlightAware. LaGuardia still had more than 100 delays at that time, the most in the country, FlightAware said, with more than 600 cancellations to and from the airport.
Those disruptions were set to continue throughout Monday night after the airport reopened. “As operations resume, travelers should expect residual delays and cancellations,” the airport said in a statement on X. “Travelers are strongly encouraged to check with their carrier before departing for the airport.”
Travelers should check the status of their flight on their airline’s website and monitor their email, texts, and airline apps for updates from their air carriers.
Airlines such as Delta, which is one of the largest carriers based at LaGuardia, said they would automatically rebook any customers with flights affected by the airport’s closure.
Passengers who are automatically rebooked by the airline on a different flight should remember that if the new itinerary doesn’t work for them, they are entitled to a full refund to the original form of payment under federal regulations.
Most major US airlines were offering flexibility to travelers flying through the New York area in the form of change fee waivers that enable passengers to push their flights back to a date with fewer disruptions. American Airlines, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and United all are offering fee-free changes to affected passengers.
This story has been updated with new information since its original publish date.
