An additional 2,200 flights were canceled on Tuesday, nearly 700 of which were in, to or out of the United States, according to tracking website FlightAware. More than 2,000 flights have been delayed.
Monday was an even bigger nightmare for travelers, with more than 2,800 canceled flights and 11,000 delays.
The cancellations come at the busiest time of year for air travel. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration said it screened millions of people a day over the holiday weekend, peaking at 2.19 million travelers on Thursday, Dec. 23. More people passed through TSA checkpoints on Wednesday than on the same day in 2019.
Air traffic slowed down on Saturday due to flight cancellations as more than 1.53 million people passed through security checks on Saturday.
“The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our aircrews and the people running our operation,” said a United memo obtained by DailyExpertNews.
“We apologize to our customers for the delay in their vacation travel plans,” Delta said in a statement. “Delta people are working hard to get them to where they need to be on the next available flight as quickly and safely as possible.”
International flights
European airlines are also dealing with a small number of cancellations amid record numbers of Covid-19 cases in several European countries.
German airline Lufthansa said it will cancel 10% of its winter flight schedule as the pandemic continues to hit the airline industry.
In an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung last week, Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said the airline will have to cancel 33,000 flights from mid-January to February 2022, or 10% of the group’s winter flight schedule, due to “a sharp drop in bookings”. .
Spohr’s comments were confirmed to DailyExpertNews by Lufthansa’s press service.
— Pete Muntean, Arnaud Siad and Ramishah Maruf of DailyExpertNews contributed to this report