(VOVWORLD) - Commercial airlines around the world canceled more than 4,500 flights over the Christmas weekend, as a mounting wave of COVID-19 infections driven by the Omicron variant created greater uncertainty and misery for holiday travelers.
 Passengers line up at John F. Kennedy International Airport after airlines announced numerous flights were canceled during the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant on Christmas Eve in Queens, New York City, US, December 24, 2021. (Photo: Reuters) |
Airline carriers globally scrapped more than 2,400 flights on Friday, which fell on Christmas Eve and is typically a heavy day for air travel, according to a running tally on the flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. Nearly 10,000 more flights were delayed.
The website showed that nearly 1,800 Christmas Day flights were called off worldwide, along with 400 more that had been scheduled for Sunday.
Commercial air traffic within the US and into or out of the country accounted for more than a quarter of all the canceled flights over the weekend, the data showed.