Over 3,000 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day flights are canceled globally as Omicron spreads

[Eric]

Sounds like all major airlines cancelling several flights.

NY Times
Thousands of would-be travelers received the same troubling message on Thursday: a last-minute cancellation of their Christmas flights on Friday and Saturday because of the recent spike of Omicron cases, including among airline workers.

The number of cancellations globally as of Friday morning added up to more than 3,000, the Flight Aware website showed. It was the latest blow to the holiday season, mainly caused by the new and highly transmissible Omicron variant, which now accounts for more than 70 percent of new coronavirus cases in the United States.

This is a comment from a flight attendant on Reddit as well

They sent us an email saying to take a at home test before coming to work a flight if possible. But then also sent another email saying too many FA’s have been calling out sick and we need to show up for the holidays

All of this while it's estimated that half of the population will get Omicron over the next three months.

'Enormous spread of omicron' may bring 140M new COVID infections to US in the next two months, model predicts

Outside the US, IHME models show the world may see approximately 3 billion new infections in the next two months, with a peak of 35 million per day.

www.usatoday.com

Let's hope this is the beginning of the end.

 

[Alli]

I’ll have to text my son later and see if this affected him. He was due to fly back to NY from FL today after two weeks of waiting for his paternal grandmother to slip free the bonds of life. She died Tuesday night, funeral was yesterday morning, and yesterday afternoon they cleaned out her apartment.