US airlines cancel more than a thousand Christmas flights
US airlines have canceled more than a thousand flights on Christmas weekend as staff and crew call out sick amid the surge of the Omicron variant.
Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, JetBlue flights, Alaska Airlines, and American Airlines canceled hundreds of domestic flights on Saturday.
United Airlines told The Hill in a statement earlier this week that the “nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation.”
"The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation," said a United memo obtained by CNN.
Globally, about 5,700 flights were canceled on Christmas Eve day, Christmas and the day after Christmas, according to FlightAware. That includes about 1,700 flights within, into or out of the United States.
Meanwhile, America is seeing a surge in coronavirus cases.
The surge has been blamed, in part, on the new, highly transmissible Omicron variant.
The surge prompted hospitals in Ohio, which were running low on beds and staff, to take out a full-page newspaper advertisement pleading with unvaccinated Americans to get the shot.
The ad read, simply: “Help.”
Health experts believe approximately 15 percent of the unvaccinated adult population are at the greatest risk of severe illness and death from the Omicron variant and could overwhelm hospitals that are already brimming with COVID-19 patients.
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