Blame an unforgiving Mother Nature for a jump in flight cancellations at Reagan National Airport this summer.
An analysis by CBS News covering the early-summer period (Memorial Day to mid-July) found a 274% increase in flight cancellations at the airport compared to the same period in 2024.
Nearly 6% of the airport’s flights were canceled, compared to 1.8% nationally. The national figure was, itself, up from 1.4% a year before.
The CBS figures were based on data from FlightAware and the analytics firm Cirium.
Why the big spike at Reagan National? Getting anyone to speak publicly proved something of a challenge.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) sent ARLnow to individual airlines.
A representative for one of the airport’s major carriers did not wish to speak on the record, but confirmed that the most significant driver was summer weather being more volatile than typical.
Weather indeed seems the most logical explanation, particularly considering days like Sunday, July 27.
That day, the Arlington area was hit by whopper afternoon thunderstorms. According to MWAA’s flight tracker for that day, a significant number of flights were delayed or canceled, because of the storms that moved through.
Impacts can linger long after a weather system moves out.
On Friday, for instance, Reagan National recorded 89 cancellations — a significant 9% of the national total, according to figures from Flightaware.
The reason that day could be attributed to a batch of heavy storms and wind that had occurred when two weather systems collided over the region a day earlier. Planes couldn’t get into Reagan National on Wednesday afternoon or evening, making them unavailable for morning flights out of the airport on Friday.
From 2021 to 2024, the annual percentage of flights canceled at Reagan National has varied from 1.6% to 4%, according to Bureau of Transportation Statistics data. For the 12 months ending in April 2025 — the latest publicly reported — the cancellation rate at the airport was 2.6%.
