Beverly Commuter Train Canceled Because Of 'Crew Availability'

BEVERLY, MA — Coronavirus-related travel cancellations apparently found their way to the North Shore on Thursday.

The MBTA said early Thursday afternoon that the Newburyport/Rockport Line Train 198 from Beverly was canceled because of "crew availability issues."

Passengers were encouraged to consider Train 116 from West Gloucester for service to North Station on Thursday night.

The train cancellation is the latest in a growing series of travel delays and headaches after airlines began widespread flight cancellations because of a lack of crews across the country in the past week.

As of 9:30 a.m. Thursday, 52, or 6.4 percent, of 814 flights to and from Logan International Airport had been canceled in the previous 24 hours.

Dozens of others had been delayed as airlines tried to shuffle flight crews. That was down only slightly from Sunday, when 54 flights from Logan were canceled.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)