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

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines is offering extensive travel flexibility for cities across the South and Southeast — including Atlanta — for travel between Friday-Sunday ahead of the impending winter storm.

Affected cities range from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, from San Antonio to Wilmington, North Carolina.

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,” the airline said in a statement Wednesday.

As of early Wednesday, the National Weather Service was “confident” some form of wintry precipitation will affect locations along and north of I-20 in metro Atlanta. There is still uncertainty about how locations south of that line will be impacted, “but models are consistently forecasting” wintry precipitation for that area also, the agency warns.

Delta customers are able to change their affected travel plans without fees, the airline said.

As of around noon Wednesday, American Airlines was the only other major airline to have included Atlanta in a travel waiver for the upcoming winter weather Friday-Sunday.

United Airlines had not included Atlanta in its list of affected locations, and Atlanta’s two other largest airlines, Frontier Airlines and Southwest Airlines, had not issued waivers for the winter weather.