Pilots, flight attendants and other employees gave themselves up due to illness or had to quarantine after exposure to Covid
More than 6,000 flights were canceled worldwide over the long Christmas weekend and thousands more have been delayed, according to a monitoring website, 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.
On Friday there were about 2,400 cancellations and 11,000 delays, while cancellations on Sunday have already exceeded 1,100. Pilots, flight attendants and other employees gave themselves up due to illness or had to 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 times 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 on 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. Similarly, Delta canceled 310 flights on Saturday and was already canceling several dozen more on Sunday, stating that it has “exhausted all options and resources, including the redirection and replacement of aircraft and crews to cover scheduled flights.” “We apologize to our customers for the delay in their vacation travel plans,” said the company.
The cancellations added to the frustration of the pandemic for many people eager to be reunited with their families over the holidays after Christmas last year was severely curtailed. Chinese airlines recorded the highest number of cancellations, with China Eastern canceling more than 1,000 flights, over 20% of its flight schedule, on Friday and Saturday and Air China also blocking about 20% of its scheduled departures during the period.
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