More than 6,000 flights were canceled worldwide over the long Christmas weekend and thousands more were delayed for the Omicron variant of the covid. Compounding the chaos of travel to the United States is bad weather in the west of the country. According to Flightaware.com, nearly 2,800 flights worldwide were canceled on Saturday, including more than 970 to or from US airports, with over 8,000 delays at 01:30 GMT.
There were around 2,400 cancellations and 11,000 delays on Friday, while cancellations on Sunday have already exceeded 1,100. Pilots, flight attendants and other employees became ill or were forced home for quarantine after exposure to Covid, forcing Lufthansa, Delta, United Airlines, JetBlue, Alaska Airlines and many other understaffed carriers to cancel. flights during one of the peak periods of the year.
Flightaware data showed United canceled around 200 flights on Friday and nearly 250 on Saturday, about 10% of those scheduled. There was a rush to reroute pilots and planes and reassign employees, but the Omicron wave has disrupted business. “Omicron’s national spike in cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people running our operations,” United said in a statement Friday. “As a result, we have unfortunately had to cancel some flights and are alerting affected customers in advance of their arrival at the airport,” the airline said.
Likewise, Delta canceled 310 flights on Saturday and was already canceling several dozen more on Sunday, claiming it had “exhausted all options and resources, including redirecting and replacing aircraft and crews to cover scheduled flights.” “We apologize to our customers for the delay in their vacation travel plans,” the company said.
Chinese airlines recorded the highest number of cancellations, with China Eastern canceling more than 1,000 flights, over 20% of its flight schedule, Friday and Saturday, and Air China also blocking about 20% of its scheduled departures. In the period.