Typhoon Dolphin Cancels 1,400 Flights in Shanghai

Typhoon Dolphin Just Cancelled 1,400 Shanghai Flights, This Was the Most Powerful Typhoon to Hit China This Year

Typhoon Dolphin made landfall near Yuhuan in Zhejiang Province at 5:30 PM local time on August 9, 2026, packing maximum sustained winds of 151 kilometres per hour, equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane, making it the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit China in 2026. VariFlight data recorded approximately 1,500 cancelled flights at Shanghai's Pudong and Hongqiao airports, while Hangzhou's airport in neighbouring Zhejiang saw a further 270 inbound and outbound cancellations. More than one million people were evacuated across the affected region. 

Shanghai's two international airports cancelled 60% of their expected Sunday flights simultaneously. That is not a disruption. That is a shutdown.

What 1,400 Cancellations Actually Means for the Network

Shanghai Pudong is one of the world's busiest international cargo and passenger airports. Hongqiao handles primarily domestic and short-haul regional traffic, while Pudong serves international long-haul routes across Asia, Europe and North America. When both airports cancel simultaneously, the disruption does not stay local. Aircraft that were supposed to arrive in Shanghai to operate onward legs cannot. Crews positioned for outbound departures are stranded. Passengers connecting through Shanghai onto European and North American services face cascading delays well beyond Chinese airspace.

The storm's aviation impact was felt before landfall. Taiwanese airlines cancelled flights bound for China as Dolphin's outer bands brought heavy rainfall to northern Taiwan, including the capital Taipei, on Saturday. By the time the typhoon made landfall Sunday evening, the disruption had already been running for 24 hours across a multi-country arc. 

The Difference Between a Typhoon and Every Other Aviation Disruption

A mechanical failure grounds one aircraft. A crew shortage disrupts a handful of departures. A typhoon closes an entire airport for a day or more and simultaneously makes it impossible to pre-position replacement aircraft, relief crews or engineering support. Every contingency plan airlines operate depends on being able to move resources to where they are needed. A regional typhoon removes that option precisely when the need is greatest.

Typhoon Dolphin had already swept through Japan's southern Okinawa Prefecture before reaching China's coast, injuring six people and cutting power to more than 50,000 buildings. The Philippines experienced flooding and landslides from the storm's intensification of monsoon rains earlier in the week, displacing more than 12,000 people. By the time Dolphin made Chinese landfall it had disrupted aviation across four countries in seven days, Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan and China, a footprint that reflects how a single storm system can ripple across an entire regional aviation network sequentially rather than all at once. 

Shanghai's Particular Vulnerability

Parts of central and eastern Zhejiang could receive 250 to 500 millimetres of rain from the storm, with severe flooding and landslide warnings in effect across the region. Shanghai's location at the mouth of the Yangtze River Delta makes it structurally exposed to typhoon season in a way that inland hubs are not. Pudong Airport sits on reclaimed land at the edge of the East China Sea, operationally advantageous for noise management and expansion, but directly in the path of storms tracking up the coast from the South China Sea. 

Hong Kong, over 1,200 kilometres to the south, recorded a record high temperature of 36.9°C on Sunday as warm air pushed over the city by Typhoon Dolphin's circulation created extreme heat conditions, a reminder that a typhoon's effects extend well beyond its immediate landfall zone. Every airport in a 2,000-kilometre radius felt the storm's influence in some form yesterday. 

Recovery operations are underway across Shanghai's two airports today. The backlog of stranded passengers, displaced aircraft and disrupted crew pairings will take days to clear. Typhoon season in the Western Pacific runs through November.