Flight cancellations marred Christmas weekend for many travelers, as COVID-19 left carriers short-staffed to operate busy schedules over the holiday, the Wall Street Journal reported. In the U.S., canceled flights mounted through the weekend and involved many airlines. The disruptions came suddenly as a ramp-up in employee absences caught carriers off guard. The industry for months had been adjusting to labor shortages amid high customer demand, and because of measures such as incentive pay and scaled-back schedules had gotten through Thanksgiving largely without problems. It was over Thanksgiving weekend that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 emerged as a new global public health foe. Its rapid spread pushed the airlines’ staffing limits this weekend, they said. It was unclear Sunday whether the worst of the canceling was over or if there would be more in the days ahead. “Our current pilot COVID-19 case count is on the rise. Pilots who have developed symptoms are also in quarantine and we have a high number of pilots on the sick list,” Bryan Quigley, senior vice president of flight operations at United Airlines Holdings Inc., on Sunday wrote to pilots. He asked them to take precautions. Delta Air Lines Inc., which pointed to the new variant as well as winter weather as problematic, said midday that it had canceled about 161 of the 4,155 flights it had planned to operate Sunday, with around 40 more cancellations forecast for the day, a smaller number than it had initially expected to scrap. Delta canceled 375 flights on Christmas Day and more than 200 on Christmas Eve, the airline said. (Subscription required.)
