Travel nightmare: Another 2,500 flights cancelled Monday

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

More than 2,800 flights have been cancelled Monday as COVID cases surge across the globe.

Of the more than 2,800 cancelled flights, around 1,000 were within, into or out of the United States, and almost 11,000 flights are delayed.

Globally, airlines cancelled more than 6,000 flights on Christmas Eve, Christmas and the day after Christmas.

In the United States, more than 1,200 flights were cancelled and more than 5,000 were delayed on Sunday alone as staff and crew call out sick.

The cancellations come at the busiest time of year for air travel. The US Transportation Security Administration said it screened millions of people each day over the holiday weekend, peaking at 2.19 million travellers on Thursday, December 23.

On Wednesday, more people passed through TSA checkpoints than on the same day in 2019.

Alaska Airlines, which cancelled 133 flights of 19% of its operations Monday, attributed its cancellations and delays on winter weather in the Pacific Northwest.

The airline said it cancelled almost 250 mainline flights scheduled to arrive or depart from Seattle Sunday. As of Monday afternoon, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has the most delays and cancellations in the world.

Saturday air travel was a bit slower because of the flight cancellations: More than 1.53 million people passed through security checkpoints Saturday.

United Airlines (UAL) said last week it had to cancel hundreds of flights because it lacked enough crew members to safely fly all of its scheduled routes.

The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation.

Delta (DAL) said it was working to get all stranded travelers home as quickly as possible.

International flights

European airlines are also experiencing a small number of cancellations amid record-breaking numbers of COVID-19 cases in several European nations.

A British Airways spokesperson told on Monday that the airline had canceled a number of flights due to operational constraints ​and are instead using larger aircrafts, where possible, to get customers to their destinations.

German airline Lufthansa said it will cancel 10% of its winter flight schedule as the pandemic continues to hit the aviation industry.

In an interview with 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 flight schedule.

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