Saturday, December 25, 2021
More than 5600 flights canceled
Thousands of failures in Christmas traffic
There is usually a lot going on at train stations and airports at Christmas. But the corona pandemic has changed that. This year the tourist traffic is calm. However, numerous flights worldwide are canceled or delayed due to sick pilots. Apparently the new Omikron variant is the reason.
Christmas travel this year was initially without major disruptions. The situation on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day remained relatively calm on Deutsche Bahn trains and at the airports. However, several airlines worldwide had to cancel more than 5,600 flights because too many pilots called in sick. The USA in particular was affected. On the German rails, however, according to Deutsche Bahn, progress was made without major disruptions. “The rail traffic was overall very quiet,” said a spokesman.
On Thursday, the first day of vacation in most federal states, as expected, more travelers had used the Deutsche Bahn trains. The railway had expected a particularly large number of travelers on the Thursday before the holidays and on the Monday after the holidays. According to the information, the number of bookings is higher than last year, but still 35 to 40 percent below the pre-Corona level. This year there are a good 550,000 seats in the Christmas traffic – 50,000 seats more than a year ago. On connections that are in high demand, Deutsche Bahn will be using special trains until January 2nd, for example between Berlin and Stuttgart or Munich and between Cologne, Düsseldorf and Berlin.
A spokesman said that operations at Munich Airport were also stress-free on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The people would have got used to the procedure – such as checking the vaccination or convalescence records as well as the tests. During the Christmas holidays in Bavaria, the airport expects around 10,000 flights. This is significantly more than in 2020 (2300), but still less than before the 2019 corona pandemic (15,000).
The situation was similar at the largest German airport in Frankfurt. There was not much going on, said a spokesman for the operator Fraport. According to the information, there was still a lot of travel going on until noon on Christmas Eve. According to Fraport, it was possible to comply with the applicable distance regulations, for example at check-in counters or baggage carousels.
Airline: “Omikron-related problems”
However, there were also restrictions on air travel, especially in the USA. As data from Flight Aware showed, almost 2,500 flights were canceled worldwide on Christmas Day. Around 850 of the canceled flights should therefore take off or land at US airports. More than 3,500 flights were delayed. On Christmas Eve, Flight Aware had around 2,400 canceled flights worldwide. Almost 11,000 other flights were affected by delays. According to Flight Aware, almost 800 flight cancellations have already been announced for Boxing Day. According to its own information, Flight Aware tracks aircraft around the world and records their take-off times, landing times and delay information from, among other things, the air traffic control systems of states as well as their own ground stations and satellites.
According to US media reports, the highly contagious Corona variant Omikron is the main cause. The New York Times, for example, quoted a Delta Airlines spokeswoman as citing “a combination of problems, including weather and omicron-related problems.” A spokesman for the airline United named sick notes from crew members as the main cause. Omikron is now dominant in the USA. The number of corona cases has recently skyrocketed.
Lufthansa also announced on the Thursday before Christmas that it would have to cancel six pairs of flights from the outward and return flights between 23 and 26 December because so many pilots had called in sick. It remains, the number of canceled flights has not increased further, said a spokesman on Saturday. In addition to a connection to Tokyo, the German airline also mainly affects US destinations such as Houston, Boston and Washington. The company did not want to speculate about a connection with Omikron, as Lufthansa was not informed about the nature of the illnesses.