Thousands more flights cancelled across United States following winter storm

New York: Thousands more flights were cancelled across the United States on Wednesday, with no end in sight of travel misery as the country digs out from a deadly superstorm. Officials in Erie county in western New York, the hardest hit area by the massive winter storm, lifted their death count to 37, taking the national total to at least 59. Around-the-clock work to restore electricity continued in the county's main city of Buffalo, with the number of outages down to 128 residents, Mayor Byron Brown told media later in the day.

Another kind of crisis was playing out at US airports around the country, as Southwest Airlines was forced to cancel thousands more flights to try to recover from



a spiraling logistics breakdown.

Stranded travellers search for their luggage at an airport in Chicago. The airline's problems stranded thousands of customers as well as pilots and flight attendants. The storm, which descended on the United States just before the busy Christmas holiday weekend, led to unusually cold weather in much of the country, including southern states like Texas and Florida.

Temperatures were moderating nationwide Wednesday, including in Buffalo, even as the region remained in triage mode. The city, on the shores of Lake Erie near the Canadian border, has seen a majority of storm-related fatalities.