Thousands more cancellations as Omicron thins airline crews

[NEW YORK] At least 2,100 more flights were cancelled globally on Monday (Dec 27), including about 700 US flights, as travel disruptions from one of the year's busiest weekends for flying spilled into the workweek.

Over the holiday weekend, airlines cancelled thousands of flights as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus hit flight crews. In all, about 2,300 US flights were cancelled on Saturday (Dec 25) and Sunday (Dec 26) of the Christmas holiday weekend, with another 3,500 grounded globally, according to FlightAware, which provides aviation data. On Sunday alone, more than 1,300 US flights and nearly 1,700 additional ones worldwide were cancelled.

While some of the groundings were caused by bad weather and maintenance issues, several airlines acknowledged that the current wave of coronavirus cases, which has risen in the US to levels not seen since last winter, contributed significantly.

A JetBlue spokesman said the airline had "seen an increasing number of sick calls from Omicron." 12 per cent of JetBlue flights, 6 per cent of Delta Air Lines flights, 5 per cent of United Airlines flights and 2 per cent of American Airlines flights on Sunday had been cancelled, according to FlightAware.

Southwest Airlines canceled just 68 flights, or 1 per cent, according to FlightAware, and the cancellations were caused entirely by weather, said Dan Landson, a Southwest spokesman.

"We haven't had any operational issues related to Covid," he said in an email.

Travelling rebounded sharply this year, making the situation at airports worse: roughly 2 million people passed through screening checkpoints each day last week, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

The numbers on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were much higher than the equivalent figures last year, and some figures even exceeded those of the same days 2 years ago, when virtually no Americans were aware of a virus then beginning to circulate halfway around the world.

There were hints that the worst of the cancellations may be over in the US. For instance, Delta was expecting to cancel about 200 flights Sunday, fewer than the 300 it had predicted a day earlier, according to a spokeswoman, and it is forecasting only 40 cancellations Monday.

On the other hand, airlines also expect lots of travel Jan 2, a Sunday. And the Omicron variant, which is now responsible for more than 70 per cent of the new US coronavirus cases, has already helped push daily case averages in the US above 200,000 for the first time in nearly 12 months, according to The New York Times' coronavirus tracker.

An airline trade group has asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to shorten the recommended isolation period for fully-vaccinated employees who test positive to a maximum of 5 days, from 10 days, before they can return with a negative test.

"Swift and safe adjustments by the CDC would alleviate at least some of the staffing pressures and set up airlines to help millions of travellers returning from their holidays," said Derek Dombrowski, a JetBlue spokesman.

The flight attendants' union, however, has argued that reductions in recommended isolation times should be decided on "by public health professionals, not airlines." Some of this weekend's delays had little to do with the pandemic. Alaska Airlines had instituted an extensive program to keep crews healthy and even had members of its management team who are trained to be crew members step in, said a spokeswoman, Alexa Rudin.

On Saturday and Sunday, it had only a handful of cancellations related to crew exposures to the coronavirus, according to Rudin. Yet it had cancelled 170 flights those 2 days, according to FlightAware, including 21 per cent of its Sunday flights, because of unusually cold and snowy weather in the Pacific North-west, which affected its hub, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

NYTimes