© EFE
Thousands of passengers have faced travel difficulties.
The beginning of 2022 brought chaos of canceled flights worldwide, due to the pandemic. 2500 were canceled in the United States and about 4500 worldwide this Saturday.
This was reported by FlightAware, the flight monitoring service. This is the highest number in a single day since before Christmas. At the time, airlines claimed they were understaffed due to the spike in coronavirus cases in crews. A) Yes, Since December 24 there have been more than 12 thousand flights canceled in the United States.
The bad weather also contributed its own. Chicago suffered 800 flights canceled at O’Hare airport and more than 250 at Midway airport due to the harsh winter, with 23 centimeters of snow. In Detroit, New Jersey, Newrk and Denver there were at least a hundred cancellations each.
La empresa Southwest Airlines, which operates in Chicago Midway and Denver, canceled more than 450 flights throughout the country, the equivalent of 13 percent of your services. American, Delta, United and JetBlue canceled more than 100 flights each. SkyWest, a regional airline that operates flights under the names American Eagle, Delta Connection, and United Express, had to cancel more than 400 flights, that is, 21 percent of its operations.
At the level of international airlines, China Eastern canceled more than 500 flights, 25 percent of the total. Air China did the same with 200 flights, which according to FlightAware represents a 20 percent of your scheduled trips.
In order to try to reduce cancellations, United offered triple or more of their salaries to pilots to take over scheduled flights through mid-January. Southwest also made similar offers.
For its part, stranded passengers had to face other issues. If they chose to travel by land, they had to do so on slippery routes due to rain and water, with poor visibility, which forced them to travel at a very slow speed.
The Federal Aviation Administration itself stated on New Year’s Eve that expected flight delays due to staff shortages caused by the pandemic. Delta Airlines estimated between 200 and 300 cancellations per day as a result of the pandemic and bad weather. In fact, between December 31 and January 1, he canceled more than 300 trips.
Compared to 2020, the movement of passengers was reduced by almost 700 thousand people. It fell from 2.3 million to 1.6, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration.
“The nationwide increase in omicron cases had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation”, assured from United Airlines, a company that closed the year with 220 cancellations.