Around two-thirds of Americans have been placed under severe weather warnings over the past week, with the worst effects felt in the city of Buffalo in New York State where 28 people have died, the BBC reports.
Thousands of flights have been cancelled over the holiday season after a "bomb cyclone" weather event quickly drove down temperatures, which rapidly resulted in blizzard conditions.
According to the BBC, around 5,000 flights were cancelled on Tuesday (27 December) alone, with Southwest Airlines shouldering 60% of the cancellations. Some 3,500 flights scheduled for Wednesday (28 December) were also pre-emptively cancelled.
Neither British Airways or Virgin Atlantic proactively reported any major disruption to their transatlantic schedules, with both carriers’ departures from New York signalling ‘on time’ on Wednesday morning.