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On Thursday, Airlines dropped Christmas Eve travel plans into chaos and canceled hundreds of flights and potentially stranding millions of Americans. United is the 3^rd largest airline in the world, announced that it had grounded 112 Christmas Eve flights out of an abundance of caution amid cases of Omicron continuing to skyrocket across the United States. The Airline issued a statement and said, “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. We’re sorry for the disruption and are working hard to rebook as many people as possible and get them on their way for the holidays”.

Point to be noted that Delta Airlines, is also a transportation giant and echoed a similar sentiment in a statement. The Airline announced that it had preemptively canceled 82 flights on Christmas Eve, referring to Omicron and potential issues with the weather. Delta issued a statement and said, “Delta teams have exhausted all options and resources – including rerouting and substitutions of aircraft and crews to cover scheduled flying before canceling around 90 flights for Friday. Delta people are working hard to get travelers to where they need to be as quickly and safely as possible on the next available flight”. Moreover, Alaska Airlines has also reportedly canceled a number of flights for similar reasons, while the exact number of grounded planes has not been identified.

American Airlines also issued a statement and said, “American Airlines is not currently seeing anything out of the ordinary in relation to Christmas Eve”. It is noteworthy that American is also one of the biggest airlines in the world and reportedly handled over 200 million global passengers in 2019. But they have not anticipated anything out of the ordinary for their holiday season. The Airline said it is expected to carry around 420,000 passengers daily. Many other aspects of the airline industry continue to struggle with the influx of travelers as the number of people flying approaches pre-pandemic levels, in spite of American’s optimistic approach and approach of Christmas Eve. The US Transportation Security Administration said that it screened over 2 million people through US airports each day from December 16 to 20.