Winter storms in the Midwest combined with surging coronavirus infections to drive more than 5,500 flight cancellations in the U.S. over the New Year’s weekend, one of the toughest recent streaks for travelers.
Chicago’s two main airports, O’Hare and Midway, saw half of their flights canceled on Saturday as a snowstorm moved through the region, scuttling flights and triggering delays from Denver to Detroit. Almost 2,700 flights had been canceled nationwide by Saturday evening, according to aviation data tracker FlightAware, a unit of
Raytheon Technologies Corp.
Airlines already have canceled thousands of flights over the past week because of Covid-19-related staffing challenges, prompting some to proactively scrub services.
The Federal Aviation Administration has warned of possible delays due to its own Covid-driven employee issues. On Saturday, the agency said it was delaying arriving planes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport because of staffing challenges.
Over 1,100 Sunday flights nationwide already have been canceled, mainly around storm-hit hubs like Chicago.
Photo:
Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press
More than 1,100 flights for Sunday already have been scrubbed nationwide, said FlightAware. These are mainly around storm-hit hubs such as Chicago, where the National Weather Service reported 2 inches of accumulation by 6 p.m. local time.
Carriers such as
JetBlue Airways Corp.
that have heavy staff concentrations in the Covid-hit Northeast also continued to have high cancellation rates. JetBlue last week moved to trim its schedule through mid-January due to increasing numbers of crews calling in sick.
Even with elevated cancellations and rising Covid-19 case numbers, demand for airline travel stabilized last week around 18% below 2019 levels based on Transportation Security Administration data, with 1.65 million people screened on Friday.
The number of canceled flights over the past two weeks has surpassed those of the entire winter season in each of the past four years, according to FlightAware, whose tally included domestic flights and those into and out of the U.S.
Winter 2013 was the worst in recent years for cancellations, with nearly 10,000 scrubbed flights during the season, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Write to Doug Cameron at [email protected]
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