the travel nightmare that began before christmas is is still not over. pamela brown here in for anderson tonight. and when we left you last night, southwest airlines ceo was apologizing to all the passengers stranded by all the flights the company canceled due to the weather and its system meltdown. well, 24 hours later there are about another 2,500 reasons to apologize, as in about 2,500 more cancellations today and nearly as many tomorrow. and it s gotten to the point that southwest has been busing some people from airports as far away as new york s laguardia and denver to houston. details now from cnn s gabe cohen. reporter: tens of thousands of travelers still weathering southwest s meltdown without a clear end in sight. i m hungry and exhausted. i just want to go home. reporter: the airline canceling more than 2,500 flights wednesday. 62% of its schedule according to flight aware. with a similar wave of cancellations already shaping up for thursday. this has been
the world. i m whitney wild. the death toll from that huge winter storm keeps rising. it is now up to 62 deaths across 11 states. of those by far the greatest share were in erie county, new york, where at least 37 people died. a horrible storm with too many deaths. we know without the work of these first responders and others, more people would have died. first responders are still checking on callers they couldn t reach in buffalo which was buried under nearly 52 inches of snow. overnight buffalo lifted a driving ban. cnn s miguel marquez has more on the digout. reporter: buffalo digging out. officials here responding to criticism they should have done more. 35-mile-an-hour wind gusts for three hours straight with less than a quarter mile visibility. monique alexander died in the storm on christmas eve. a buffalo native who had been through many snowstorms here thought this one was the same. we were waiting for her to come home. i knew something was wrong right a
season. i ll do what the medical experts advise me to do. and i m quite certain they re not going to advise me in the wrong direction when it has to do with his health. his health is the first, foremost and only priority. reporter: this was his second diagnosed concussion this season for tua tagovailoa, kaitlan. there s an overwhelming amount of former players on social media urging tua to take care of his body and mind, let them heal because his long term health is far more important. rg-3 saying he shouldn t play again this season. we ll see what he and the team decide. thanks for the update. cnn this morning continues right now. good morning, everyone. it is thursday, december 29th. don is off this morning. we have a lot of news under way, especially coming out of ukraine where russia has launched a massive attack overnight. missile strikes hitting critical infrastructure injuring civilians. we re live at the scene of one of those strikes in a few moments. al
right now. first, my personal apology on behalf of myself and everyone at southwest for all of this. second, a pledge to do everything we can and to work day and night to repair our relationship with you and offer some new resources that we have to get you the fastest information and fastest service possible. it is the top of the hour, 8:00eem eastern. we re glad you re with us. it is december 29th. welcome to cnn this morning. i think everyone wants an apology. i m confused because he said at one point that if you still haven t gotten your bad you could get it at no cost to you, which is you could get back at what you own. so we re talking about this apology this morning from southwest airlines. this time from the chief commercial officer brian green. this comes at 2300 more southwest flights today have been canceled and they announced new ways they are planning to help stranded customers. listen to this. you could submit a full refund request for any canceled
again today. passengers missing some of life s most important events. at this point, because i cannot get there, michael is there without a bride. it is hard to get married without your bride there. the word i can say is devastated. i don t know how else to explain how we re all feeling right now. more on the company s new apologies and the changes they re making ahead. let begin in ukraine. ben wedeman is live there in kyiv and, ben, your team could hear explosions on the ground and you ve seen the damage firsthand. walk us through your experience in the last couple of hours? reporter: well, we heard around 9:00 in the morning, jessica, several loud explosions and later we went to the scene of where apparently some of the debris of those rockets fell. now according to the mayor of kyiv, 16 missiles were fired in the direction of the capital. but all of them were intercepted by the air defenses. however debris fell in several locations. the first location was a house