Hurricane Sandy grounds thousands of flights

NEW YORK -- Airlines canceled more than 5,000 flights mostly as a result of Hurricane Sandy, with hubs along the East Coast bearing the brunt of the disruptions.

According to the flight-tracking service FlightAware, 1,100 Sunday flights have been canceled as of Sunday afternoon, with more than 265 cancellations at Newark Airport, a hub of United Airlines.

For Monday, nearly 4,000 flights were canceled, with 857 cancellations at Newark, followed by 632 at New York's Kennedy Airport and more than 500 cancellations at both New York's LaGuardia and Philadelphia International.

FlightAware said it expects the number of flight cancellations for Monday and Tuesday to "rise considerably."

A spokesman for United Airlines parent United Continental Holdings Inc. said the carrier has suspended an unspecified number of flights to New York and Washington-area airports beginning Sunday evening with plans to resume Tuesday as conditions permit.

JetBlue Airways Corp., which flies out of JFK, said it has canceled more than 1,000 flights from Sunday through Wednesday morning.

Hurricane Sandy is heading north from the Caribbean, where it has left nearly five dozen dead, to meet a winter storm and a cold front, plus high tides from a full moon. Experts say the rare hybrid storm that results will cause havoc over 800 miles from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.