The Christmas travel season is among the busiest airline travel periods of the year, but there are reports of cancellations of hundreds of flights scheduled for Friday.
KIRO-7's Ryan Simms tweeted breaking news Thursday night of hundreds of Christmas Eve flights being canceled ''because of crew shortages due to omicron COVID-19 coronavirus variant.''
FlightAware tracks flight cancellations worldwide, and has 301 Christmas Eve U.S. flights canceled as of 8:40 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, including 121 United Airlines flights and 90 Delta Air Lines flights.
Among other reports, Delta has already canceled 84 Christmas Day flights, while United has canceled 27.
''The nationwide spike in omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation,'' United spokesperson Josh Freed wrote in a statement. ''As a result, we've unfortunately had to cancel some flights.
''We're sorry for the disruption.''
Delta, citing potential inclement weather and the impact of the omicron, told Reuters it has ''exhausted all options and resources — including rerouting and substitutions of aircraft and crews to cover scheduled flying — before canceling around 90 flights for Friday.''
Delta CEO Ed Bastian on Tuesday asked the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to shrink quarantine guidelines for fully vaccinated people who experience breakthrough COVID-19 infections, citing the impact on the carrier's workforce. Bastian asked that the isolation period be cut to five days from the current 10.
That request was echoed by Airlines for America, a trade group representing major cargo and passenger carriers, which wrote to the CDC on Thursday, and by JetBlue on Wednesday.
The CDC released updated quarantine guidance for health workers Thursday, cutting the isolation time to seven days for workers who test positive for COVID-19 but are asymptomatic, providing they test negative.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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