New Delhi: More than 2,000 flights were canceled on Christmas Eve globally, including more than 500 in the United States, because the airline faced the lack of staff due to illness in the surge in the case of Covid-19, triggered by a very contagious Omicron variant.
Also, more than 8,000 pending flights around the world, disrupt vacation trips.
According to the latest updates on the Flighteare website to 9.45 PM IST, as many as 2,149 global flights were canceled on Friday, while the total cancellation inside, to, or out of the United States stood at 510, even when millions of Americans continued to travel through the holiday season Second pandemic.
On Christmas Day, a total of 1,331 flights have been canceled so far globally, including 310 inside, being, or out of the United States, according to Flighteare.
Among the US airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Line have announced on Thursday that they each have dozens of dozens of Eve Christmas.
On Friday, calculation of cancellation for United stands in 173 flights and for Delta 143, according to the aircraft.
Ten flights from American Airlines are also canceled, mentioning the website.
Among the main global airlines, Lufthansa based in Germany said on Friday that it canceled a dozen remote transatlantic flights during the Christmas holiday period because of the “massive increase” on sick leave among the pilots.
The cancellation includes flights to Houston, Boston and Washington in the US, which the airline said happened despite the “big buffer” of additional staff for the period.
The airline said it could not speculate on whether Covid-19 infection or quarantine was responsible for not being informed of the type of disease.
Passengers are booked on other flights.
“We are planning a very large buffer for the holiday period.
But this is not enough because of the high level of people who call sick,” Lufthansa said in a statement.
Delta Air Lines and United Airlines echoed they had to cancel the dozens of Eve Christmas flights because the lack of staff was tied to Omicron.
“The national surge in the omicron case this week has had a direct impact on our flight crew and the people who carry out our operations,” United said in a statement.
“As a result, we unfortunately have to cancel several flights and notify the affected customers before they come to the airport.” The airline said he was working to resell as many people as possible.
Apart from the impact of Omicron, Delta added that flights were canceled on Friday due to possible bad weather after “fatigue all options and resources – including routes and replacing aircraft and crew to cover scheduled flying”.
It was said in a statement that he tried to get passengers to their destination quickly.
Chief Executive Lufthansa Carsten Spohr previously said on Thursday that it would cut its winter flight plan with “around 10%” as the spread of the Omicron variant burned uncertainty about the trip.
“From mid-January to February, we see a sharp decline in bookings,”, lead the airline to cancel “33,000 flights or around 10%” from his flight this winter, SPOhr said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Cancellation comes because the United States has recorded nearly 170,000 new daily cases, a 38% increase over the past two weeks, driven by a new variant, a burdensome hospital, according to the New York Times.
The US has so far recorded 52,788,451 cases and 834,455 deaths, mostly in any country throughout the world, according to the worldometer.
Meanwhile, the CEO of Delta Ed Bastian has called for the government of Joe Biden to take steps in the route of countries such as Spain and England, which have reduced the length of Covid-19 quarantine by letting people return to work faster or exposed to viruses.
He said if the limit was not moving there there could be further disturbances in air travel.
On Thursday, the US shortened Covid-19 isolation rules only for health workers.
Australia also canceled the dozens of flights in the big cities of Sydney and Melbourne as the Coronavirus case in the country jumped to the highest since the beginning of the pandemic.
Australia has recorded more than 500 omicron cases so far.
(With agency input)