Commercial airlines around the world canceled more than 4,500 flights over the Christmas weekend, as a mounting wave of COVID-19 infections driven by the Omicron variant created greater uncertainty and misery for holiday travelers.
Airline carriers globally scrapped at least 2,401 flights on Friday, which fell on Christmas Eve and is typically a heavy day for air travel, according to a running tally on the flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. Nearly 10,000 more flights were delayed.
On Friday, more than 2,400 cancellations and 11,000 delayed flights were reported by the flight tracking website. Another 600 cancelled flights were already announced for Sunday.
The cancellations caused a major disruption to the return to Christmas travel this year, causing further anxiety and uncertainty after the 2020 holiday season was severely affected by the pandemic.
The most recent surge in COVID-19 cases and the rapid spread of the Omicron variant created a host of issues for airlines like Lufthansa, Delta and United Airlines, including staff shortages as more and more pilots and cabin crew members reported ill with the virus or were forced to quarantine on arrival in certain countries.
