A week of travel woes: More than 8,000 flights canceled since Christmas Eve

Thursday marks a week of travel woes across the place with more than 8,000 flight cancellations nationwide due to the fact Christmas Eve. As tens of millions of People vacation during what could be the busiest vacation time period due to the fact the start off of the pandemic, airlines have been slammed with both equally wintertime temperature and mounting COVID-19 circumstances between flight crews.

Now, at least a single big U.S. airline, JetBlue Airways, is signaling this weeklong crush of cancellations may well just be the starting.

JetBlue claimed on Wednesday it is preemptively canceling more than 1,200 flights about the upcoming two weeks in purchase to have ample crews obtainable to operate a responsible procedure.

“Whilst the new CDC tips should assist get crewmembers again to perform quicker, and our schedule reduction and other efforts will even further simplicity day-of cancellations, we anticipate the selection of COVID scenarios in the northeast — the place most of our crewmembers are dependent — to go on to surge for the next week or two,” the airline reported in a assertion. “This implies there is a higher likelihood of further cancellations right up until case counts start out to appear down.”

On Thursday, a lot more than 1,100 flights ended up canceled in the U.S. as of 2:30 p.m. ET.

Seattle Tacoma International has been impacted the most, keeping the top rated spot for the most cancellations in the entire world for a third day in a row with practically a third of all flights grounded. The airport added, “Staffing problems may bring even more delays in functions.”

Alaska Airways, whose most important hub is in Seattle, is reporting get in touch with keep moments of more than 10 to 20 hours.

“We strongly urge flyers with non-necessary travel scheduled before January 2, 2022, to take into account shifting their travel to a later on day applying our flexible travel policy,” the airline stated in a statement Wednesday.

The disruptions come as airports brace for the more than 10.5 million fliers believed to fly from now till Jan. 3. The busiest New Calendar year journey times are still in advance with Hopper forecasting 2.5 million could fly on Jan. 2 and Jan. 3.

Delta Air Lines is now projecting 200 to 300 daily cancellations for the forthcoming weekend as “teams throughout [their] technique continue on to do all achievable to mitigate constraints from escalating wintertime temperature and the omicron variant.”

In the meantime, the Federal Aviation Administration is warning of troubles of its personal, these as unwell air targeted traffic controllers. The FAA warned on Thursday that climate, holiday break traffic and COVID-19 “are most likely to consequence in some travel delays in the coming times.”

“Like the rest of the U.S. population, an improved selection of FAA employees have examined beneficial for COVID-19,” the FAA claimed in a assertion. “To preserve basic safety, targeted traffic quantity at some facilities could be reduced, which might final result in delays all through busy durations.”

Industry experts say the COVID-19-similar cancellations need to be a reminder to vacation fliers to defend oneself as a lot as you can through journey.

“These cancellations are reasons why it is really essential for folks to have on the masks, wash their palms commonly and minimize motion all over the cabin when you happen to be on a aircraft,” aviation specialist Henry Harteveldt stated. “It is really just definitely important. All of these are component of layers of basic safety to continue to keep every person as healthful as feasible even though touring for the holiday break.”

ABC News’ Sam Sweeney contributed to this report.