Flight cancellations: Another 2,500 flights canceled on Tuesday as travel disruptions continue in the middle of the Omicron climb
An additional 2,500 flights were canceled on Tuesday, with more than 800 of them inside, in or out of the United States, according to tracking site FlightAware. More than 5,100 flights have been delayed.
Monday was an even bigger nightmare for travelers, with more than 2,800 departures and 11,000 delays.
The cancellations come at the busiest time of the year for flights. The U.S. Transportation Administration said it surveyed millions of people every day over the holiday weekend, reaching a peak of 2.1[ads1]9 million travelers on Thursday, December 23rd. On Wednesday, more people passed through TSA checkpoints than on the same day in 2019.
On Saturday, flights were a little slower due to the flight cancellations: More than 1.53 million people passed security checks on Saturday.
“The nationwide increase in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people operating our operation,” a United memo from CNN said.
“We apologize to our customers for the delay in their holiday travel plans,” Delta said in a statement. “Delta people are working hard to get them where they need to be as quickly and as safely as possible on the next available aircraft.”
International flights
European airlines are also experiencing a small number of cancellations among a record number of Covid-19 cases in several European nations.
The German airline Lufthansa said it would cancel 10% of its winter aircraft as the pandemic continues to hit the aviation industry.
In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung last week, Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said that due to “a sharp drop in bookings”, the airline will have to cancel 33,000 flights from mid-January to February 2022 or 10% of the group’s winter aircraft.
Spohr’s comments were confirmed to CNN by Lufthansa’s press office.
– CNN’s Pete Muntean, Arnaud Siad and Ramishah Maruf contributed to this report
