Storms snarl flight schedules in Midwest, Northeast

— -- Flight delays, hundreds of cancellations and the closure of a major airport are creating havoc for fliers in the Northeast and Great Lakes as a major winter storm moves through the regions.

All flights were halted at Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport early this morning and it is not yet known when they might resume, according to the Federal Aviation Administration's website, which cited "snow removal" as the cause.

And in New York, where even routine congestion problems have been known to ripple across the USA, more than 500 flights had been canceled by noon ET at the city's three commercial airports.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Steve Coleman says Newark Liberty has been hit with 374 cancellations, the highest number at the three airports. Forty-five flights have been canceled at JFK Airport and 140 have been canceled at LaGuardia.

Delays averaging anywhere from 45 minutes to nearly three-and-a-half hours are being reported at the three airports, where the FAA has put a "traffic management program" into effect to meter the flow of flights into and out of the city as the storm reduces flight capacity there. Delays are likely to persist into the evening.

The New York airports are far from alone.

In the Midwest, delays averaging from 30 to 60 minutes are being reported at Chicago O'Hare, Chicago Midway and Detroit. Back in the East, the FAA is reporting average delays of more than two hours at Philadelphia.

The flight disruptions extend what has already been a difficult week-before-Christmas for air travelers.

Just in the past 36 hours, air travelers have had to contend with schedule disruptions that resulted from snow in Las Vegas and fog at Dallas/Fort Worth and at several Oklahoma airports. Those problems forced the cancellation of more than 100 combined flights.

And the today's woes in Chicago come after the city's two airports combined to cancel more than 125 flights there yesterday because of storms.