UNITED Airlines is canceling around 120 Christmas Eve flights, citing Covid-19’s impact on their staff.
The cancelations have to do with the Omicron variant’s impact on flight crews and other workers, and customers are not happy.
United confirmed the cancelations in a statement to The Sun on Thursday evening.
“The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation.
As a result, we’ve unfortunately had to cancel some flights and are notifying impacted customers in advance of them coming to the airport. We’re sorry for the disruption and are working hard to rebook as many people as possible and get them on their way for the holidays.”
The statement added that about 120 flights were cancelled on Christmas Eve.
Dozens of holiday flights on Delta and Alaska Airlines have also been impacted because of Omicron.
As of late Thursday, Delta had canceled around 90 flights for Christmas Eve and Alaska Airlines had canceled 17.
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Delta cited a combination of potential inclement weather, along with the large spike in new Covid cases for the cancelations.
This comes as air travel across the US is expected to tick back up close to pre-pandemic levels for the holidays.
United CEO Scott Kirby told Good Morning America on Monday that he expected 420,000 customers a day to travel on United flights over the next two weeks.
AAA’s holiday travel forecast, released last week, predicted a total of 6.4million people would travel by air between December 23 and January 2.
This is a 184 percent increase over the same period in 2020.
Users took to social media to share their disdain over delayed or canceled flights.
“@United ‘Apologies for inconvenience’ […] do nothing for a woman who cannot see her dying mother. No organization and a complete lack of compassion make [United Airlines] a JOKE,” one user wrote.
“[Asked] the @united airlines flight attendant for advice since the delay was gonna make me miss my connection and he said ‘What do you want me to do about that? Good luck’ #MerryChristmas,” another chimed in.
A total of 109.5million people are expected to travel over the holidays, according to AAA predictions, despite the growing concern of the new Covid variant.
About 100.1million people are expected to travel by car, while about 2.9million are expected to use other methods like trains or buses.
That’s up 33.9 percent over 2020, but still 8.2 percent below pre-pandemic levels of 119.3million travelers in 2019.