The problems continued Monday, with nearly 900 flights canceled within, into or out of the United States, according to FlightAware. More than 1,600 flights are delayed.
The troubles come at the busiest time of year for air travel: The US Transportation Security Administration said it screened millions of people each day over the holiday weekend, peaking at 2.19 million travelers on Thursday, December 23. Seven of the last 10 days have seen more than 2 million screenings.
A nasty brew of issues has complicated air travel, including the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, the labor shortage and a surge in travelers crowding airports and the skies.
“The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation,” said a United memo obtained by CNN.
“We apologize to our customers for the delay in their holiday travel plans,” Delta said in a statement. “Delta people are working hard to get them to where they need to be as quickly and as safely as possible on the next available flight.”
Airline travel is surging again
Leisure travel is back to near pre-Covid levels. On Friday and Saturday, TSA screened about two-thirds of the passengers it did on those days in 2019 (when Christmas fell on a Wednesday).
Airlines are projected to carry 6.4 million of those passengers, AAA said. That’s about triple the number from last year when the pandemic significantly curtailed holiday travel.
The labor shortage
Airlines were already having trouble finding enough crew to meet the surge in demand for travel. Omicron is making that labor shortage even worse.
Officials with various airline unions say that their members are stressed to the “breaking point” by work conditions because of understaffing. Many pilots and flight attendants say they’re having trouble getting the hotel rooms they need to meet the government-mandated rest requirements while working.
Pilots at American have held informational pickets in recent weeks to complain about work conditions. And the airline unions correctly predicted that the problems would get worse with the pick-up in travel over the holidays.
–CNN Business’ Chris Isidore and Pete Muntean contributed to this report.