Wednesday flights: Cancellations hit 550 on busy travel day

Airlines waive change fees for Thanksgiving storm

That number grew even more on Wednesday morning, climbing to about 550 as of 12:30 p.m. ET, according to FlightAware.

U.S. carriers have increasingly decided to preemptively cancel flights in recent years when poor weather was forecast to hit busy airports, and that trend appears to be playing out again for this latest storm. Wednesday's preemptive cancellations came as an approaching winter storm threatened to snarl flights at the peak of the Thanksgiving travel rush.

Nearly a third of Wednesday's cancellations came at just three airports: New York LaGuardia, Newark Liberty and Philadelphia. More than 11% of Wednesday's entire schedule had already been grounded at Newark, LaGuardia and Philadelphia airports as of 12:30 p.m. ET, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. A number of those cancellations were made Tuesday evening.

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USA TODAY WEATHER: Winter storm targets East Coast for Thanksgiving Eve

Washington Reagan National, Boston, New York JFK, Westchester County, N.Y., Hartford, Conn., and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton were among other airports that had an unusual number of preemptive cancellations for Wednesday.

All of those airports are in the path of a storm that's bring mess weather and strong winds to East Coast's biggest cities. Still, more than 200 of Wednesday's cancellations came even before the first rain drops or snowflakes fell in those cities.