Thanksgiving Travelers Hope To Dodge Weather Delays

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Thanksgiving brings one of the busiest travel periods of the year, with more than 3 million people expected to fly this week.

With so much air traffic, airports everywhere can easily become congested with travelers, and after hundreds of flights were canceled on Sunday and Monday at Dallas-Fort Worth due to troublesome weather, travel conditions in other parts of the country may continue to deteriorate.

At least 1,300 total flights have been canceled since the weekend, which is twice as many as last year.

While the East Coast deals with the storm Californians saw the early stages of last week, a number of major airports along the Eastern Seaboard, including JFK and O'Hare International, are experiencing major delays.

LAX, along with other major airports on the West Coast, meanwhile, may begin seeing delays too as East Coast delays pile up. This ripple effect of delays and shutdowns in the Northeast could result in eastbound flights from Western airports being delayed as well.

"I was out here for business and concerned about getting back home in time to celebrate the holidays with my family," one traveler at LAX said.

Heavy winds already prompted ground closures at Newark Airport in New Jersey early on Tuesday, and travelers looking to get to the East Coast by Thanksgiving are hoping to beat further delays.

At Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International, the world's busiest airport, precipitation is already heavy the area, which means more flight delays or cancellations could appear overnight.

The storm is expected have a deeper effect on those travelers whose flights have connections at other airports.