Filenews 25 December 2021
Airlines around the world cancelled more than 4,500 commercial flights over the Christmas weekend, as the rising wave of COVID-19 cases, most notably the Omikron variant, created greater uncertainty and difficulties for holiday travellers.
Carriers around the world cancelled at least 2,401 flights yesterday, Christmas Eve, which is typically a day with a lot of traffic at airports, according to the site's count FlightAware.com. Nearly 10,000 more flights had delays.
According to the same source, 1,779 flights were cancelled worldwide on Christmas Day, as were 402 more scheduled for tomorrow, Sunday.
Air traffic within the U.S. as well as to or from the country accounts for more than a quarter of all flights cancelled for this weekend, according to FlightAware data.
Among the first U.S. companies to announce a wave of cancellations for the Christmas weekend were United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, which together cancelled nearly 280 flights yesterday alone, citing staff shortages amid a surge in COVID-19 cases.
In recent days, COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have increased due to the highly contagious variant strain of Omikron, which was first detected in November and now accounts for nearly three-quarters of infections in the U.S., and even 90% of cases in some areas.
The average number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. has risen 45% to 179,000 per day last week, according to a Reuters count.
Yesterday alone, New York recorded over 44,000 new confirmed infections, surpassing that state's daily record. At least 10 other states recorded new case records within 24 hours on Thursday or Friday.
