U.S. airways scrapped practically 1,000 flights on Christmas Day, the second straight day of large cancellations as surging COVID-19 infections have sidelined some pilots and different crew members, upending plans for tens of hundreds of vacation vacationers over the Christmas weekend.
A complete of 957 Christmas Day flights, together with home flights and people into or overseas, have been canceled, up from 690 on Christmas Eve, in accordance with a operating tally on flight-tracking web site FlightAware.com. Practically 2,000 flights have been delayed.
At the least one airline stated that it expects a whole bunch extra cancellations at this time.
The Christmas holidays are sometimes a peak time for air journey, however the fast unfold of the extremely transmissible Omicron variant has led to a pointy enhance in COVID-19 infections, forcing airways to cancel flights as pilots and crew should be quarantined.
“The nationwide spike in Omicron instances this week has had a direct influence on our flight crews and the individuals who run our operation,” United Airways spokesperson Maddie King stated. She stated the cancellations made up a small portion of United’s 4,000 common day by day flights through the vacation season.
Greater than 6,300 flights have been cancelled globally this weekend, as a whole bunch of airline crew, principally pilots, have been in quarantine after contracting the Omicron variant.