Thousands of flights cancelled due to snow storms, pandemic

More than 4,400 flights worldwide have been grounded due to heavy weather conditions and the coronavirus pandemic as people tried to travel back home after holidays.

A winter storm that hit the Midwest on Saturday made Chicago the worst place in the US for travelers throughout the weekend.
AFP

A winter storm that hit the Midwest on Saturday made Chicago the worst place in the US for travelers throughout the weekend.

Wintry weather combined with the pandemic to frustrate air travelers whose return flights home from the holidays were canceled or delayed in the first days of the new year.

“It was absolute mayhem,” said Natasha Enos at Denver International Airport on Sunday. 

He spent a sleepless Saturday night and Sunday morning at the airport during what was supposed to be a short layover on a cross-country trip from Washington to San Francisco.

More than 2,600 US flights and more than 4,400 worldwide were grounded Sunday, according to tracking service FlightAware.

That followed Saturday's mass cancellations of more than 2,700 US flights, and more than 4,700 worldwide.

Saturday's single-day US toll of grounded flights was the highest since just before Christmas, when airlines began blaming staffing shortages on increasing Covid-19 infections among crews.

A winter storm that hit the Midwest on Saturday made Chicago the worst place in the country for travelers throughout the weekend. About a quarter of all flights at O’Hare Airport were canceled Sunday.

Denver's airport also faced significant disruptions. Enos, who was flying on Frontier Airlines, didn't learn that her connecting flight home to California was canceled until she had already landed in Denver. 

Then it was a rush to find alternative flights and navigate through baggage claims packed with stranded and confused travelers, amid concerns about the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant of Covid-19.

READ MORE: Nations curtail New Year celebrations as Omicron surges globally

'Exhausted kids'

“It was a lot of people in a very small space and not everybody was masking,” said the 28-year-old financial analyst. 

“There were a lot of exhausted kids and some families were so stressed out.”

In Michigan, the authority that runs Detroit International Airport said crews were working around the clock to remove snow and maintain the airfield. 

Atlanta's airport authority advised travelers to arrive earlier than usual because of high passenger volume, potential weather issues and pandemic-fueled staffing shortages that could lengthen the time it takes to get through security gates.

And thousands of miles from the closest snow storms, Hawaiian Airlines said it had to cancel several flights between islands and across the Pacific due to staffing shortages.

Southwest Airlines said it was working to help customers affected by about 400 flights canceled around the country Sunday, about 11 percent of its schedule. The Dallas-based airline anticipates even more operational challenges to come as the storm system pushes into the Eastern seaboard.

READ MORE: Omicron spreads global gloom as New Year's celebrations approach

Airlines have said they are taking steps to reduce cancellations caused by workers affected by the pandemic. 

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