Flight Delays and Airport Impacts: February 6, 2026
Snow is the main operational watch item for U.S. flying on February 6, 2026, with the Federal Aviation Administration flagging slower operations at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) and Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) plus Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW). Travelers with connections through Detroit and Chicago are the most exposed because hub arrival rates drive delays across many unrelated origin airports. The practical next step is to protect your first departure, pad connection time, and monitor FAA and airline updates for any ground stop or delay program announcements that can lock in longer gate holds later in the day.
The Detroit Chicago snow flight delays setup is a capacity story, not a nationwide shutdown, but it can still feel systemwide because Chicago and Detroit sit on dense connection flows. The FAA daily outlook highlights snow at DTW, ORD, and MDW, and low clouds in Seattle Tacoma International Airport (SEA), which is a common combination that creates rolling, uneven delays rather than one clean disruption window.
Who Is Affected
The most exposed travelers are those connecting through Detroit Metro, Chicago O'Hare, or Chicago Midway, especially on itineraries that rely on tight bank connections. When snow reduces runway throughput, deicing cadence, or taxi efficiency, the airports can accept fewer arrivals per hour. Air traffic control protects safety and spacing by metering departures headed to those hubs, which is why a traveler can see a long departure delay at an origin airport with decent local weather, the constraint is downstream.
Travelers flying into or out of Seattle Tacoma should treat the day as condition dependent. Low ceilings often translate into intermittent flow management, where flights look stable and then deteriorate as arrival rates tighten. The operations plan explicitly flags low ceilings in Seattle as a constraint, and it also notes that a ground stop is possible there if conditions verify worse than forecast.
There are also second order groups that can feel impacts without touching Detroit, Chicago, or Seattle. The FAA operations plan calls out en route thunderstorm constraints in the New York and Miami center areas, which can add minutes, reroutes, or metering on flows that feed hubs and long haul corridors. Those small delays matter most later in the day because they reduce schedule slack, then a slightly late inbound becomes a late outbound, and misconnects rise when later banks have fewer open seats.
What Travelers Should Do
Start with immediate actions that reduce exposure to surprise holds. Check your airline app before leaving for the airport, then look for any traffic management notes that mention ground stops or delay programs into Chicago O'Hare, Chicago Midway, Detroit Metro, or Seattle Tacoma. If you have a choice between two workable departures, the earlier option is usually safer because it preserves reroute inventory if the hubs slow later.
Use a clear decision threshold for rebooking versus waiting. If your connection is tight enough that a modest arrival delay breaks it, or if you are booked on the last reasonable flight bank of the day, moving early to a nonstop, a different hub, or an earlier routing is usually the better trade while seats still exist. If your delay is still measured in minutes and you have multiple later protected options on the same ticket, waiting can be rational, but only if you can tolerate an overnight without breaking a cruise embarkation, a medical appointment, or a fixed event.
Over the next 24 to 72 hours, monitor whether snow impacts repeat across multiple arrival banks in Detroit and Chicago, and whether Seattle ceilings tighten enough to trigger initiatives. Watch for patterns like repeated gate holds into the same hub, rising average arrival delays, and airline notifications that expand flexible change options. Those signals usually appear before the worst airport line conditions, and they are often the earliest warning that recovery will take longer than the first delay estimate suggests.
How It Works
The FAA daily outlook is an operations planning snapshot, it highlights constraints most likely to reduce capacity at major airports and airspace regions. Snow matters because it slows surface movement, increases deicing demand, and can reduce runway acceptance rates, all of which lower how many aircraft can safely land and depart per hour. Low ceilings matter because they can force instrument spacing, which also reduces arrival throughput even when runways are open.
Disruption propagates through the travel system in layers. First order effects are local to the constrained airports, arrivals slow, gates fill, taxi times rise, and departures slip. Second order effects hit connections and aircraft rotations, a delayed inbound misses an outbound bank, the aircraft that should have moved to the next city is now late, and rebooking inventory collapses fastest on the most popular later departures. Third order effects show up as crew legality risk and passenger services strain, where late day delays can become cancellations, and that is when hotels, rental cars, and rideshares tighten around the hubs.
For related context on how winter constraints have been setting up this week, see Flight Delays and Airport Impacts: February 5, 2026 and Flight Delays and Airport Impacts: February 4, 2026. For a deeper structural explainer on why staffing and modernization choices shape day to day reliability even when weather is moderate, reference U.S. Air Traffic Control Privatization: Reality Check.