Ómicron grounds hundreds of additional flights in the US over Christmas weekend

Pur Humira Pamuk and Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. airlines suspended hundreds of flights for a third day in a row on Sunday as COVID-19 infections surged from Omicron’s shift crews and forced tens of thousands of travelers to fly. Change your plans for the Christmas weekend. .

Commercial airlines canceled 656 flights in, into or out of the United States on Sunday, down slightly from about 1,000 flights on Christmas Day and nearly 700 on December 24, according to a tally on flight-tracking website FlightAware.com.

More cancellations and more than 920 flights are likely to be delayed.

The Christmas holidays are often a prime time for air travel, but the rapid spread of the omicron variant has led to a sharp increase in COVID-19 infections, forcing airlines to cancel flights with pilots and crew who must be in quarantine.

Delta Air Lines expected more than 300 flights to be canceled on Sunday.

Globally, FlightAware data showed that nearly 2,150 flights were canceled on Sunday and another 5,798 were delayed, according to information released at 9.40 a.m. EDT (1440 GMT).

Micron was first detected in November and now accounts for nearly three-quarters of cases in the United States and up to 90% in some areas, such as the East Coast. The average number of new coronavirus cases in the United States has risen 45% to 179,000 a day over the past week, according to a Reuters tally.

While recent research indicates that Omicron produces milder disease and a lower rate of hospitalization than previous variants of COVID-19, health officials have maintained a cautious note about the outlook. (Reporting by Humira Pamuk, Editing in Spanish by Juana Casas)