Power outage adds to woes at Kansas City International Airport

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A power outage at Terminal B at Kansas City International Airport temporarily added to the woes of many passengers already facing long lines, delays and cancelations caused by a massive winter storm.

41 Action News Reporter Jenna Hanchard reported the outage at about 10:50 a.m. Airport spokesman Joe McBride said the power was restored by 11:05 a.m.

McBride told 41 Action News the outage impacted the ticket counter and the check-in area. It was caused by a problem with a transformer underneath the terminal, he said.

An enormous storm system that dumped snow and sleet on the nation's midsection and unleashed damaging tornadoes around the Deep South has begun punching its way toward the Northeast, slowing holiday travel for much of the country.

Post-Christmas travelers faced a second day of flight delays and cancellations, a day after rare winter twisters were reported in four states.

More than 900 flights around, into and leaving the U.S. were canceled as of midday Wednesday, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com. The cancelations were mostly spread around airports that had been or soon would be in the path of the storm.

As of 10:55 a.m. Wednesday, Kansas City International Airport listed one canceled departure and one canceled departures, with only a few other delays posted.

It's was costly waiting game for Bill and Laura Carter from Kansas City. The couple spent two days trying to get to their sunny vacation in Florida.

"Our flight had been delayed this morning and so we weren't going to be able to catch our connecting flight in Dallas to get to Tampa so we had to buy new tickets last night just to go to Tampa," said Laura Carter

The Carters painfully dished out $1,000 dollars for new tickets to Tampa. For other travelers, like Audrey Taggert, a massage therapist from Columbus, Ohio, a canceled flight meant a smaller paycheck. 

"I depend on the money. You know, the more people I see the higher the paycheck is and if  I'm missing a day that's one out of four days that's a fourth of my paycheck," said Haggert

Holiday travelers in the nation's midsection also battled treacherous driving conditions from freezing rain and blizzard conditions from the same fast-moving storms.

In Missouri, the Department of Transportation issued a Christmas night advisory urging drivers to stay off the roads in the southeast corner of the state until conditions clear.

In Arkansas, highway department officials said the state was fortunate the snowstorm hit on Christmas Day when many travelers were already at their destinations.

Some mountainous areas of Arkansas' Ozark Mountains could get up to 10 inches of snow, which would make travel "very hazardous or impossible" in the northern tier of the state from near whiteout conditions, the weather service said.