Southwest, American canceling or delaying thousands of flights through noon today

Dallas’ two major airports and their hometown airlines are pre-emptively canceling or delaying thousands of flights through noon Tuesday as a winter storm brought freezing temperatures and drizzle across North Texas.

By around 2:45 p.m. Monday, Southwest Airlines had called off or delayed over 1,000 flights nationwide, according to flight tracking site Flightaware.com. It also proactively halted or delayed another 300 flights scheduled for Tuesday morning.

Nationally, over 4,200 flights were canceled or delayed.

About half of Southwest’s canceled flights on Monday and Tuesday were into or out of its home base airport, Dallas Love Field. The airline is still coping with the fallout of the holiday meltdown that left millions of travelers stranded at airports around the nation.

At Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport, 82 flights had been canceled as of midafternoon, according to the flight tracking website flightaware.com. The majority of the cancellations — 77 flights — were on Southwest, the largest carrier at Harry Reid. Three Frontier Airlines flights and two American Airlines flights completed the Las Vegas cancellations. The canceled flights included both inbound and outbound travel.

Southwest spokesman Chris Perry said travelers should confirm their flight status on Southwest.com or the company’s app before heading to the airport.

“As we commonly do, our teams made proactive schedule reductions in advance of (the storm’s) potential effects on our operation,” Perry said in an email. “To provide flexible rebooking options, a travel advisory is active for customers traveling to / from / through a number of airports where we operate in Texas and Oklahoma.”

American Airlines, which canceled or delayed more than 585 flights on Monday, issued a travel alert for passengers traveling to, from or through DFW International Airport.

American is waiving change fees for passengers booked in any fare class for tickets bought for flights scheduled between Jan. 29 and Feb. 2. Other conditions apply as well, such as flying from the same originating and destination airports and rebooking in the same cabin or agreeing to pay the difference.

Travelers making changes must rebook by Feb. 2 and travel must be completed within a year of the original ticket date, and some differences in fares may apply.

Storms brought sleet and freezing rain all over the Texas-oklahoma region Monday morning and afternoon causing hazardous road conditions, according to the National Weather Service.