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Passengers travelling home for Christmas have been hit with disruption worldwide after airline companies cancelled more than 2,000 flights on Friday, according to a flight tracking website.
The surge of Christmas Eve cancellations comes as the rapidly spreading Omicron variant means carriers are unable to staff their flights.
The bulk of the cancellations came from five firms, with China Eastern cancelling 474 journeys, while Air China scrapped 188. United has cancelled 180 flights, Air India 160 and Delta has called off 127, figures from FlightAware show.
At time of writing, the the flight tracking firm said the current number of Christmas Eve flights cancelled globally is 2,031. The figure includes 448 cancelled in the United States, where Omicron now accounts for more than 70% of new cases.
“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,” United said on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Delta said it has “exhausted all options and resources – including rerouting and substitutions of aircraft and crews to cover scheduled flying – before cancelling around 90 flights for Friday.”
The airline attributed the impact of the Omicron variant and weather conditions for the cancellations.
In response to the pre-holiday chaos, airlines have called for the relaxation of quarantine rules for vaccinated staff. Delta’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, asked the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to cut the self-isolation period for vaccinated people experiencing breakthrough infections from 10 to five days. Airlines for America and JetBlue have seconded the request.
The request comes amid a relaxation of self-isolation rules in England, allowing people to end quarantine after seven days if they test negative on two tests 24 hours apart. Similarly, the CDC in the US cut the isolation period to seven days for asymptomatic people who test negative, but only for health workers.
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