More than 7,000 flights were canceled around the world during the Christmas holiday weekend and thousands were postponed, according to a website that tracks air traffic on Sunday, in light of the outbreak of the highly contagious coronavirus “Omicron”.
Bad weather is exacerbating the turmoil in the travel sector in the United States, where storms are expected to cause chaos on the roads in the west of the country.
Flightaware.com reported that more than 2,000 flights were canceled on Sunday, including more than 570 flights coming from or heading to US airports, while more than 4,000 other flights were delayed.
Wanted Plans Hosts and other employees are on sick leave or have to self-quarantine After they had contact with people infected with Covid or were infected with the epidemic, forcing Lufthansa, Delta, United Airlines, JetBlue, Alaska Airlines and other airlines to cancel flights during the period of the year when travel peaked.
About 2,800 flights were canceled on Saturday around the world, including more than 990 flights coming from or heading to airports in the United States, and the number of delayed flights exceeded 8,500.
On Friday, about 2,400 flights were canceled, while delays of about 11,000 were announced.
The largest number of flight cancellation decisions was announced among Chinese airlines, as “China Eastern” announced the cancellation of about 1,000 flights (that is, more than 20% of its scheduled flights Friday and Saturday), while Air China suspended about 20% of its scheduled flights during this period. .
While unusually warm temperatures hang over the states in the eastern United States, the US National Weather Service warned of storms that include extreme frosts and freezing in large parts of the American West.
“Severely cold weather and a wave of moisture from the Pacific Ocean lead to prolonged snowfall on the mountains, in addition to rainfall in coastal areas and valleys, some of which are sometimes heavy,” the authority added in a statement.
An average of two to four feet (61 to 122 centimeters) of snow is expected over the weekend, and accumulation may be greater in some areas such as the northern and central Sierras in California and Oregon, according to the Met Office.
The agency noted that travel will be “very difficult to sometimes impossible” from the Sierras to the Central Rocky Mountains during the weekend due to snow.
