Coronavirus: cancelled flights strand thousands; Boris Johnson says get a jab for Christmas gift
- For the second year, surging infections have complicated yuletide plans from Sydney to Seville; China Eastern had the most cancellations
- Thousands of people across England receive a Christmas Day booster jab as the NHS vaccination effort continues in the face of record Covid-19 cases
Air carriers scrapped more than 1,600 US flights for one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, stranding passengers during the Christmas holiday, as surging Covid-19 infections led to crippling air-crew shortages.
The global tally of dropped flights exceeded 5,400 trips for Friday through Sunday, according to data tracker FlightAware.com. China Eastern had the most cancellations, and the most-affected airport was in the Chinese city of Xian, where the Beijing government cracked down under its Covid Zero policy after an outbreak.
Delta Air Lines Inc.’s 479 cancellations for the holiday weekend led the US industry, FlightAware data showed, closely followed by United Airlines Holdings Inc., with 474 flights erased from its holiday itineraries.
JetBlue Airways Corp. chopped 50 flights on Friday, or 7 per cent of its schedule, and plans at least 120 cancellations on Saturday, according to FlightAware.
For Christmas Day specifically, some 820 US flights have been scrapped so far.
The travel snarls underscored the reach of the Omicron Covid variant that is driving US case counts higher, increasing nearly sixfold in only a week to become the dominant domestic strain.