imago
A nightmare for many people, it’s Christmas Eve and you can’t get to your loved ones – even worse, you may have to spend the night at the airport as there aren’t even any hotel rooms left! Yesterday more than 4,500 flights were cancelled worldwide – many crews are in quarantine!
Alert at the airports!
More than 4500 flights have already been cancelled worldwide over the Christmas period, with the US particularly badly affected. As data from the Flightaware.com website showed Saturday morning, at least 2000 flights were canceled worldwide on Christmas Day. 700 of the canceled flights were scheduled to take off or land at U.S. airports, according to the data. More than 1500 flights were delayed. Airlines attributed the cancellations primarily to sick calls related to the coronavirus.
On Christmas Eve, Flightaware had recorded about 2400 canceled flights worldwide. Almost 11,000 other flights were affected by delays. According to the website, 600 flight cancellations have already been announced for Boxing Day as well.
According to the airlines, the many flight cancellations during one of the peak travel times of the year are due to the fact that many pilots, flight attendants and other employees are infected with the corona virus or are under quarantine.
U.S. airline United alone had to cancel about 200 flights on Friday and Saturday, according to Flightaware – accounting for 10 percent of all scheduled flights. “The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our crews and the people who maintain our operations,” the airline said Friday.
One airline’s more than 400 outages alone!
US airline Delta was forced to cancel at least 260 flights on Saturday – following around 170 cancellations on Friday. The airline said it had run out of options to offer the flights after all – “including rerouting and replacing aircraft and crews”, Delta said.
At Alaska Airlines, numerous employees had to be quarantined after Corona contacts, and eleven flights were cancelled.
According to an estimate by the American Automobile Association, more than 109 million people in the USA had planned to travel between December 23 and January 2. That was 34 percent more than the previous year. However, most of the travel for this year’s Christmas season had already been booked before the omicron variant occurred.