Enlarge image
Passengers queue at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on Christmas Eve.
The USA is particularly hard hit by flight cancellations as a result of sick leave
Photo: DIEU-NALIO CHERY / REUTERS
The highly infectious Omikron variant is becoming a problem for international air traffic.
More than 4,400 flights worldwide have already been canceled on Christmas days - and the number is still increasing.
As data from the website Flightaware.com on Saturday morning showed, at least 2000 flights were canceled worldwide on Christmas Day.
In addition, more than 1500 flights were delayed.
Airlines justified the failures mainly with sickness reports due to the corona virus.
Pilots and flight attendants in quarantine
On Christmas Eve, Flightaware had around 2400 canceled flights worldwide.
Almost 11,000 other flights were affected by delays.
According to the website, 600 flight cancellations have already been announced for Boxing Day.
According to the airlines, the many flight cancellations in one of the main travel times of the year are due to the fact that many pilots, flight attendants and other employees are infected with the corona virus or are in quarantine.
The USA is obviously particularly affected
According to Flightaware, the US airline United alone had to cancel around 200 flights on Friday and Saturday - and thus ten percent of all scheduled flights.
"The nationwide increase in Omikron cases this week had a direct impact on our crews and the people who keep our operations going," the airline said on Friday.
Competitor Delta had to cancel at least 260 flights on Saturday - after around 170 failures on Friday.
The airline saw no more possibility of being able to offer the flights after all - "including the diversion and the exchange of aircraft and crews," said Delta.
Lufthansa also had to cancel several intercontinental flights over Christmas because too many pilots called in sick.
A company spokesman said that connections across the North Atlantic, for example to Boston, Houston and Washington, were particularly affected from December 23 to 26.
This is where the passengers can most easily be rebooked.
“We planned with a very large buffer.
But that's not enough for the extremely high sickness rate, "said the spokesman.
He did not want to speculate about a connection with the corona variant Omikron, since Lufthansa was not informed about the type of diseases.
According to a report by the specialist portal »aero.de«, the sub-fleet of long-haul aircraft Airbus A 330 / A 340 is particularly affected. For these types of aircraft, Lufthansa is now urgently looking for replacement pilots for the period up to the beginning of January.
che / AFP
