Some 6,300 flights were canceled by airlines around the world over the Christmas weekend, with the Omicron variant disrupting travel during the holidays as company employees – mostly pilots – were quarantined.
According to the latest report of the specialized website Flightaware, yesterday, Saturday, almost 2,800 cancellations were recorded, of which 970 were flights connected to the USA, either international or domestic.
On Friday, about 2,400 cancellations were recorded according to the same source, which is already expecting more than 1,100 flight cancellations today Sunday.
Pilots, flight attendants and other crew members have been quarantined for exposure to Covid, prompting Lufthansa, Delta and United Airlines to cancel flights.
According to the Flightaware website, United Airlines was forced to cancel almost 439 flights on Friday and Saturday, about 10% of those scheduled. “Omicron outbreaks across the country this week have had a direct impact on our crews and the people responsible for our operations,” the company said in a statement, adding that it was working to find solutions for passengers affected by the cancellations. .
Chinese airlines were the ones with the most cancellations: China Eastern canceled nearly 540 flights, more than a quarter of scheduled flights, while Air China canceled 267 flights, also about a quarter of scheduled flights.
Fortunately, these problems did not affect Santa’s journey, which has been monitored for decades by the North American Aerospace Administration (NORAD).
NORAD estimated that 7,623,693,263 gifts were distributed this year, after monitoring the course of the sleigh thanks, as it explained, to a sensor that had been placed in the muzzle of a reindeer.
This tradition started with a mistake. In 1955, a Colorado newspaper, wanting to publish the number of a telephone line for children to talk to Santa Claus, mistakenly printed the telephone of the military administration, which has since decided to participate in this Christmas game.
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