Dozens Of Flights Canceled At Dulles, Reagan National Airports

VIRGINIA/DC — Flight cancellations and delays continued to disrupt holiday travel at the nation’s airports Monday, including at Washington Dulles and Reagan National airports, amid a surge in COVID-19 cases caused by the omicron variant.

Airlines cited labor shortages related to the omicron surge for the cancellation of hundreds of flights over the weekend. The problems continued Monday, with more than 8,000 flights to, from and within the United States having been canceled since Christmas Eve, according to data from FlightAware, an online flight tracking service.

Nearly 50 flights out of Washington Dulles and Reagan National airports have been canceled over the past 24 hours as the omicron coronavirus variant surges.

Flightaware was reporting 39 canceled flights at Dulles International Airport late Monday morning. At Reagan National Airport, 18 flights had been canceled over the past 24 hours as of 11:30 a.m. Monday.

Delta, United, JetBlue and American have all cited coronavirus staffing problems. European and Australian airlines also canceled holiday-season flights because staff were infected, but weather and other factors played a role as well, The Associated Press reported.

Weather also played a role in the United States. Snow in the Pacific Northwest Sunday led to nearly 250 flight cancellations in and out of Seattle Sunday, according to Alaska Airlines, which expected about 100 weather-related flight cancellations Monday, the AP reported. COVID-19 wasn’t a factor in the cancellations.

United Airlines canceled 115 of nearly 4,000 flights Monday because staff and crew members called in sick with COVID-19, the airline said.

SEE ALSO: Omicron Cases Explode In Virginia, DC: See Latest CDC Data

Complicating matters, Sun Country Airlines and others canceled domestic flights because of a third-party network system outage Monday.

More staffing problems are possible.

“We have seen an increasing number of sick calls from omicron,” the airline said, adding it had entered the holiday season with the highest staffing levels since the pandemic began,” Jet Blue said in a statement.

“Despite our best efforts, we’ve had to cancel a number of flights, and additional flight cancellations and other delays remain a possibility.”

The delayed and canceled flights come during the busiest holiday travel period of the year.

Globally, airlines canceled more than 6,000 flights on Christmas Eve, Christmas and Sunday as staff and crew call out sick, according to CNN.

The Transportation Security Administration screened millions of people each day over the holiday weekend, with a peak of 2.2 million travelers on Dec. 23. On that day, more people passed through TSA checkpoints than on the same day in 2019, according to the agency.

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