US.airlines canceled hundreds of flights on Christmas Eve amid a surge in COVID-19 infections driven by the Omicron variant but millions of wary Americans carried on with travel plans through a second pandemic-clouded winter holiday.
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United Airlines and Delta Air Lines both canceled dozens of Christmas Eve flights because of staff shortages amid the surge in infections.
United Airlines canceled 177 flights and Delta canceled 150 flights, data from the website FlightAware showed as of 11:56 a.m. Eastern Time (1656 GMT). More than 2,100 flights globally were scrapped, with 527 cancellations within, into, or out of the United States, according to the site.
Friday's flight cancellations were prompted by a spike in Omicron cases which "had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation," United said in a statement.
The Transportation Security Administration on Thursday screened 2,187,792 passengers through US airports, a decrease of about 364,000 over the number of travelers it screened pre-pandemic on the same date in 2019.
